Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire and Mr McKissock

This is a place I clearly remember as being a stopping off point on a school trip from Maidenhead in the Thames Valley to Snowdonia National Park in the late 1960’s.

My memory of the town from that visit is not very clear or detailed as all I can remember is the name ‘Tewkesbury’.  I can remember exploring the town with friends from school probably foraging for something to eat and drink while our teachers most likely had lunch in a pub.  At the time the town did not strike me as special but the memories associated with it are.

One of the teachers who took us on this trip was Mr McKissock, or ‘Pete’ as we were allowed to call him while we were away from the confines of the school and all of its embedded formality.

On my first day at secondary school we gathered in our allotted classroom with our own form master whose name I cannot remember. On the blackboard, yes it was that long ago that even white boards did not exist let alone digital technology, written in chalk was our timetable for lessons.  Maths, history, geography, English, French, art, science, games and re (religious education).  A full two hours of RE on a Wednesday morning! Surely not?  I completed copying the time table into one of my new exercise books.

Wednesday morning I arrived at school with my normal satchel of books.  All my classmates turned up with their normal satchels plus another one that I could see plimsolls poking out of the top of presumably supported by gym shorts, socks and vests.  After morning assembly my class of thirty gathered in the playground.  This was not going to be an RE lesson unless we were going to have scriptures read to us in the September sunshine.  My twenty nine cohorts all had their smaller bags with them with those plimsolls poking out of the top.

‘Where’s your kit Russell?’ someone asked.

‘Got a sick note excusing you from PE Russell?’ another one asked.

‘You’re going to get the slipper for forgetting your kit Russell’ came another taunt.

Mr McKissock appeared in his tracksuit, introduced himself and told us to form in a line in pairs for the walk to the Pearce Hall on the Marlow Road in Maidenhead where we were going to do ‘PE’.  I realised my mistake.  I had written ‘RE’ instead of ‘PE’.  My first foul up at a new school.

Once inside the Pearce Hall twenty nine boys went into the changing room. I hovered between the changing room and the main hall which could be a melancholic metaphor for my life in general.  Twenty nine eleven year old boys came streaming out of the changing room, past me and into the main hall wearing new white singlets, shorts, socks and plimsolls.  I say twenty nine but in fact it was only twenty eight but more of that later.  I followed them into the hall where Mr McKissock got them all to line up against the wall while I stood in full school uniform.

‘Why aren’t you changed…….Russell….isn’t it’ Mr McKissock asked.

‘I…I….forgot my kit sir…..I wrote down the timetable on Monday and wrote ‘RE’ instead of ‘PE’ for this morning ….sir….sorry sir’ I answered.

Half expecting a severe bollocking or at worse a slippering in my first week at big school I was relieved when Mr McKissock just looked at me.

‘Oh well, get it right next week…..sit closer to the front or get some glasses’ Mr McKissock answered ‘You may as well sit up on stage with me.’

I sat on the stage while the lesson continued without me.

Earlier I mentioned ‘twenty eight’ as the number of boys who appeared in a stream of white kit coming from the changing room.  There were twenty nine boys came out but one of them, Gregg, was wearing a smudgy white top, a pair of underpants without socks or plimsolls.  His feet were black with dirt.  Twenty eight pairs of eyes turned towards this one boy.  Mr McKissock walked across the floor towards him.

‘Everyone start press ups…..not you’ directed at Gregg.

Mr McKissock was carrying a small bag and as he approached Gregg he gave him something from it and told directed him out of the room.  Gregg re-joined the class still in his grubby kit but his feet looked clean and he joined in the exercises.

When the session finished Mr McKissock started to talk to me.  At the time I had a strong Canadian accent which he latched on to in order to start a conversation with.  Then he mentioned boy twenty nine and said that in all of his years of teaching he had never seen anything like it.  I must admit that I had never seen anything like it either in my shallow eleven years of life.  In the tone of a conspirator, he asked me to remind him when we got back to school about sorting out some spare kit for Gregg.

‘Yes sir, I will’ I replied.

This was my first ever close encounter with a senior school teacher who probably was not much older than twenty five but he was over twice my age and therefore very senior but despite fouling up with my timetable I had been asked to remind a teacher to do something.  I think he would have remembered by himself but just wanted to make me feel important.

Leap forward four years and a journey from Maidenhead to Snowdonia via Tewkesbury.

After a long drive our party arrived at a lonely cottage on the side of a hill in the middle of a big field.  The sun was just beginning to disappear behind the surrounding hills and mountains creating a cold half-light.

We offloaded our kit and food supplies.  Pete held a short briefing for us in the open room on the groundfloor comprising a kitchen area, living room and an open fire.  This configuration was nothing to do with the modern trend for open plan groundfloor living areas, it was just the way the cottage had been built.  We were given a timetable for the next day and had to sort out a rota between ourselves for getting meals ready including what we would be taking on our climbing trips. 

We then went to our room.  No luxury of one or two per room but eight of crammed on to bunks in one bedroom on the first floor.  The previous year I had been on a school trip to Germany and was taken to see Dachau concentration camp.  My mind flashed back to the crowded bunk rooms the inmates there had to endure then snapped back to the present when I had to claim a bunk and roll out my sleeping bag.

Our safety briefing the next morning from Pete at the base of a mountain was ‘follow the footsteps of the one in front and if they disappear stop and call for help’.  That was more or less it.  We had no safety equipment such as ropes, first aid kits and means to call for help but this was years before the digital age.  Lunch consisted of spam or jam sandwiches and very little water.

We reached the peak of one mountain and the downward route was a long shallow sloped snowfield.  Instead of walking down we all lay on our backs and slid the length of the slope.  While we were climbing Snowdon we watched the search and rescue helicopter fly overhead and thought that someone must have been badly injured.  It added to our feeling of doing something dangerous.  A few minutes later the helicopter flew overhead going down the mountain.  Then a few more minutes later we saw the mountain rescue teams coming towards us. They told us to turn for home as the weather was closing in very quickly. Where we were on narrow snow covered ridge the sky was blue and you could see for miles but we turned for home anyway.

Most evenings after dinner we were allowed to go to the village pub where we would have a drink and play darts with the locals.  We got darts games going where the prize was a round of drinks and managed to get a few free drinks during the week. None of us were over sixteen let alone the legal age for drinking, eighteen.

One evening the other seven in the group had turned in early while Pete and his friend played cards and asked if I would like to play.  We played canasta into the early morning.  I still don’t fully understand canasta but apparently I played a mean hand and won a couple of times.

The health and safety lobby today would have had an apoplectic fit if they had been able to see the lack of preparation and awareness of the dangers involved in such a trip and the almost cavalier approach to welfare but we were being trusted to be adults.  Despite this we all returned home in one piece full of tales of daring do that were recounted to our parents and classmates.

I left school that summer to move on to college.  Pete also left the school and moved on to teach at a private school.  I returned the following November to collect some certificates and Mr Gowers, my old form master saw me.  We chatted in the corridor.

‘Did you hear about Mr McKissock?’ he asked.

‘No, what sir’ I replied.

‘He died last month…..he was out preparing the rugby pitch for the new season and was found collapsed……………’ Mr Gowers answered.

I did not hear anything else Mr Gowers said as my mind went into a state of total disbelief that Pete had gone, not just from the school but from life entirely.  I had already known of other people dying but not someone who was so young and had been not just a teacher but a friend as well.