Having passed the 11-plus examination at Delamark Road, Sheerness, Junior Boys School in 1955, I was selected for attendance at Borden Grammar School, Sittingbourne. Having always had a practical turn of mind, I had wanted to attend Sheerness Technical High School which was situated in Sheerness Broadway, where the new Blackburn Homes are now located. However, Mr. Ponton the Head of Delamark Road School had persuaded Mum that I would benefit more from an academic education than a technical one and thus my name was put down and selected for Borden.

Borden Grammar School was a single-sex, old fashioned type of grammar school which only had male teachers (masters) and although it seemed a large school population at the time, the 350 or so pupils was a tiny number compared to some of the modern comprehensives or campuses. The Rainham campus school which included the Howard School where my son Adam went subsequently and Rainham School for Girls where my daughter Jane went, probably had nearly as many teachers in the 1980’s as Borden had pupils in the 1950’s Borden Grammar drew its population of pupils both from the Sittingbourne area and also the Isle of Sheppey.

The original Borden school was housed in a Victorian building near the village of Borden on the outskirts of Sittingbourne, hence the name. When the school was relocated in the 1920's in the newly-built and named Avenue of Remembrance, the original buildings became the Kent Farm Institute, which I think was a small agricultural college. Along the Avenue of Remembrance were trees, flowering cherries, I think, each with a small stone mounted, bronze plaque in front, adjoining the road, on each of which was an individual tribute to a soldier from the town who had "fallen" in the First World War. A nice memorial and it's a pity that increased development in the road has resulted in the removal of so many of the trees and plaques.

The school was not only small in number of pupils but return visits have revealed it to be small physically, as well. Class rooms once cavernous, are now seen to be only large enough to accommodate the thirty or so desks required for the average class, together with the raised dais at the front before the blackboard, on which the master's desk and chair were placed in lofty splendour. The rooms were numbered and each room seemed to be the permanent annual domain of a member of staff and somehow imbued with his personality or indeed sometimes with his aroma.

At the change of lessons, each class or study group would wander the corridors to join the master for their next subject in his domain.

Room 2 which was "Slimy's", always smelt of his pipe tobacco. One day when he returned to class after the afternoon break, it also smelt of smouldering tweed as he hadn't extinguished the pipe adequately and it gave us a wonderful opportunity to divert from the English lesson by pointing out to him that his pocket was on fire! Room 1 was Mr. Nicholls' room where he also took us for English in my first year or so. He was our form master for my first year. The first form was divided into two classes; 1 West and 1 East. The designation had nothing to do with location but needless to say, there was always intense rivalry between the two. Our form “jingle” was “Easts are beasts, West is best”. It wasn’t poetry that was going to make the Poet Laureate feel unsettled. In case of doubt, I was in 1 West. Mr. Nicholls was of course known as "Old Nick". Mr Hill was "Slimy", derived from his initial and surname; E.Hill which was corruptible to "Eel"; hence "Slimy". Schoolboy nicknaming conventions follow very convoluted thought processes.

I quite liked Slimy but was very upset the day he said to me " I don't think you want to learn, Butler!" To him it was just a throwaway remark of exasperation but I was devastated to discover that somebody who I admired didn't have a similar reciprocal view.

Room 3 was the room where I fell in love with "The Planets". Mr Jackson -"Jacko", who took us for Latin and Music was content as part of our music education to lug in the typical K.E.C. polished-wood, cabinet gramophone with the large speaker cabinet and just play records after a very brief introductory discussion. A favourite of his was obviously Gustav Holst's "Planet Suite" and many of us came to share his taste. As music master, it fell to his lot to play the piano accompaniment to our daily assembly comprising a few prayers and one hymn from one's own personal copy of "Songs of Praise". This had to be purchased when one first went to Borden, for about half a crown, and by the fifth year was pretty dog-eared. Mr. Jackson played the very large, grand piano permanently placed on the assembly hall stage, except when a school play was being produced, when the stage was entirely masked in a proper proscenium arch of black curtains with wings and flies etc. He would have been responsible for any music and sound effects required for any school productions and Mr. Goff the art master was responsible for the back scenes and sets.

When I was in the first or second year, the school drama club put on R.C.Sherriff's play "Journey's End", a story of life in the trenches in the First World War. It was amazing how our familiar school stage was transformed into such a realistic dugout, with a back drop of blasted trees, barbed wire and a landscape of mud. The regular flashes and thunder of gunfire added to the realism. Mr. Tott our maths master had an awful stutter and speech impediment, brought on it was said by shell-shock in the First War and it must have been very distressing for him to watch, if he did. In retrospect, it’s amazing to think that we were being taught by some men who had experienced the horrors of the Great War. Like most schools of its age, Borden had also lost many former pupils during the war. In “Journey’s End”, the cast were very impressive with many of them being school prefects. To us lowly sprogs they were giants anyway, but to discover that they could act as well was overwhelming. It's strange to think that we were so impressed by individuals who were themselves only boys of 16 or 17. Of, course, they weren't much younger than most of the combatants in the real trenches!

Mr. Jackson wasn't so good at instilling either the knowledge of or love for Latin as he was for music. He left the year before we were due to take our Latin G.C.E. "O" level. His successor was Mr. Booth a young man of Rugby prop type build, fierce countenance, low patience and of Northern, probably Yorkshire, origin. He was a bit like a blond version of Freddie Truman the Yorkshire fast bowler. He decided he would drive us hard to get our "O" levels and we had a year of being “firmly led” (or pushed) into understanding Latin and pronouncing it properly. According to him the Romans pronounced a lot of their words like Yorkshiremen, thus "cum" the Latin for "with" was pronounced "Coom". Who were we to argue? For most, his drive to educate us, myself included surprisingly, succeeded. He was also the games master and if you didn't come up to scratch in Latin, the next time out on the football field, he'd tackle you as if you were 6'6" and 15 stone! The hearty types thought him OK especially as he came to school on a large motorbike and had a fairly attractive girl friend or wife.

To attract your attention, Mr. Jackson would throw a piece of chalk at you whereas, Mr. Booth would sneak up and clout you round the head. Nowadays both would count as assault but we seemed to survive then, without mental or physical trauma or concerns about our “human rights”! Mr. Jackson was the only master who used the "half D" for incremental punishment. For various misdemeanors one could be given a "D" (detention) requiring one to stay half an hour after school under the scrutiny of some poor conscripted prefect, undertaking some punishing written task, like writing out 100 times what one shouldn't do to attract a detention. This was sometimes varied by one being required to write out 200 or so, 5 or 6 or 7 letter words. Needless to say most of us carried a list of suitable words around permanently or else "hired" a list specially from regular miscreants, when one was going into "D". When the task was just to write out the same sentence many times, we would sometimes manage to conceal from our "guard" that we were using three or four pens taped together producing instant multiple lines. Mr. Jackson's use of the "half D" meant that if you kept your nose clean the rest of the lesson or week it would be expunged and one's precious after-school time was not sacrificed. This punishment system was used by both the masters and the prefects although the latters' sentences had to be underwritten by a master.

Borden's school day ended at 3.25p.m., a hangover from the War when the Sheppey boys had to have enough time to get back to their homes on the Island before the blackout. This gave one just enough time for the brisk one or so mile walk to the station to get the Sheerness train which got in to Sheerness just after 4 p.m..

Those boys who lived "up the Island" i.e. outside Sheerness town, had a further bus journey homewards. For them the school day went from any time after 7 a.m. until nearly 5 p.m.. Our journeys to and from the station had to follow a specific route, alongside the old cattle market, still in full weekly use then. Passing the pens full of lowing cattle and bleating sheep in the morning (livestock market day was a Monday, I think) and retracing one’s steps in the afternoon, past the now empty pens being washed down with hoses, filled the air with very rural aromas. It gave one the feeling that you were being schooled in a still, agricultural community.

In the days of steam trains, a special coach was attached to the rear of the train for the exclusive use of the Borden boys travelling to and from the Isle of Sheppey. This avoided the general travelling public being traumatised by our loud and unruly behaviour, although we weren’t that bad really. A number of boys from the mainland also travelled in the opposite direction each day to Sheerness Technical School. When the two trains passed it was very wise not to be looking out of the window or indeed, even to have one’s window open. If one forgot, at best one could expect a gobbet or two to head your way, if not worse! The biggest drawback to the dedicated coach was that it comprised single, compartments with no corridor. Thus, one or two school bullies had the half hour journey in which to terrorise younger pupils and some of them were quite sadistic in their dealings with others. Little word of it got out, however as one didn’t “split”. When the line was electrified, we thought the speed of acceleration and the journey were remarkable and had few nostalgic thoughts about the passing of steam. The “tighter” timetable meant that there wasn’t time or perhaps the rolling stock to attach a dedicated coach and thus we had to join the general travelling public, which meant freedom from the terrors of the bullies, but a depressingly shorter time in the morning, to “crib” the previous night’s homework from those who had actually understood the lessons! Having seen the behaviour and heard the language of boys and girls still travelling in the Medway area by train every day, I think that it would be no bad thing to separate them from civilised folk again.

Each year, usually at the end of Summer term, as the “last” school train of the year carried its excited load of schoolboys homewards, with the prospect of six or so weeks of unadulterated, holiday pleasures, those leaving the school for the very last time or perhaps, going up to the sixth form next term, would mark the occasion by the ritual casting of the school cap, the mark of uniformed servitude onto the waters of the Swale, School uniform rules were much more rigidly applied then and until one joined the sartorial freedom of the Lower Sixth, to be caught in public in school time, without the cap, would attract a very uncomfortable discussion with “George” the headmaster, next morning. A train going the opposite way on the last day of term with its Sheerness Technical School pupils, would also discharge a barrage of their black and silver caps. Briefly, the Swale would have a flotilla of blue and yellow and black and silver caps sailing seawards. I always wondered what the mainland boys did with their caps in celebration? Ritual burnings perhaps or “frisbee’d” on to town centre roofs?

New boys would still commonly wear shorts in those days, although by the third form most had progressed to long trousers. Grey shirts were normal in the winter terms and white in the warmer weather. A variety of blue and gold striped school ties were available, but always had to properly knotted, not worn loosely (if at all) as seems to be the modern practice. Shoes had to be “sensible” i.e. leather and preferably laced. Of course trainers in all their forms were yet to be invented. On top one wore a dark blue blazer bearing the school badge with its Latin motto “Nitere Porro” meaning “To strive forward”. Winter required in addition, a proper belted mackintosh, also dark blue.

One also had to have sports outfits, shorts and T-shirt for athletics and gymnastics and sometimes different shorts and a blue and yellowed quartered shirt for team games. Bearing in mind the relatively modest financial backgrounds of many of the pupils who had got to Borden on academic merit, it was quite a burden on many families, my own included, to pay for any necessary sports wear. For my first few days at Borden I lived in abject fear of it being discovered that my parents had not yet been able to afford the full range of required items. Just as well that I was hopeless at cricket as that would have required a set of whites as well! Football boots were then solidly built leather construction with layered leather studs. They were bought to last, which was OK when you were “growing into” them, but crippling when they became too small. From the third form onwards I hobbled rather than ran around the field, as a persistent, if untalented, full-back. Mind you, we didn’t keep breaking our foot bones, as the present football slippers seem to allow so often. As well as football boots, one had to have plimsolls – proper black ones with laces and if one’s talents warranted, boots dedicated for wear in hockey or basketball. With the variation on sports wear available, it’s a surprise that we ever got out of the changing rooms. However all that unwashed sports kit, mouldering away in the kit bags, didn’t encourage one to linger.

The Masters also had a sort of uniform which commonly included tweed jackets with leather patches on the elbows. Only “George” and “Dusty” the head and deputy head seemed to wear academic gowns most days. The other masters used only to wear them on special occasions such as speech days. Nobody ever wore a mortar board.

After school, during Spring and Summer terms, one was allowed to stay up to a further hour on the school grounds to play football, basketball, hockey or cricket or in the school for organised activities, like the camera and chess clubs. It was at the latter in my first year, that a fellow pupil (thanks Geoff) taught me to play chess. My favourite past-time after school on the playing fields, was for a small group of us to line up at opposite ends of the hockey pitch and just hit the balls as hard as possible down the length of the pitch towards each other. It had the advantage of only two of you being required to play. Other games, such as basket-ball required greater numbers for the semblance of a game unless one just "shot baskets". Simple pleasures when one had no television at home!

Rooms 1 and 2 looked out Westerly over the school fields and thus one could be easily distracted unless the lesson was good or the master very vigilant. Room 3 was on the front, north-western corner of the building and thus also had a view over the Avenue of Remembrance at the front of the school. Equally distracting, especially if the girls' school opposite had any field sports taking place.

Beyond Room 3 along the front of the school I think, was Room 4, the permanent abode of Roy "Geoger" Hill, with all the wall maps still with large parts of the world coloured pink (British Empire) and also the library, the biggest treasure of which was the thirty or so years' collection of bound volumes of "Punch". The library was used as an occasional classroom, a place of guarded refuge if the weather was too bad to go out at lunch time and a place where, in the fifth form and beyond, one spent "free periods", supposedly deep in further academic research, but usually trying to enjoy the Victorian, Edwardian and First World War humour to be found in the Punch volumes or enjoying the delights of the latest edition of "Health and Efficiency", smuggled into school and hired for 1d. or 2d. a read, from those with enough money and bravado to actually buy it at the newsagents.

Beyond the Library (numbered 5) was, I think, Room 6 in the corner.

Halfway along was the cross corridor which bisected the "Quadrangle" in the middle of the school. This led from the front main entrance, past the Headmaster's study and the School Secretary's office towards the school hall at the back of the building. The school hall could be extended when needed, by pushing back the full height partition wall to open it up to the adjoining Art Room, Mr Goff's domain. Our art education included some craft-work, block printing, book-binding of the most basic type and the making of "useful" cardboard containers. The "Art" comprised using powder colours in the first form and then "graduating" to water colours thereafter and painting pictures of our own devising, based on the list of titles which were up on the blackboard at the beginning of the lesson. We never explored other media, least of all oils and were not really encouraged to develop any latent talents nor develop an interest in the work of others, ancient or modern. Mr. Goff was a pleasant man but maintained a mystique about art and did not instil much interest in or enthusiasm for the subject. Anybody at Borden who became a reasonable artist, did so in spite of their education, not because of it. Nevertheless, I enjoyed Art immensely and the year when the last two periods on a Friday were Art was a wonderful one in that respect.

Apart from its use as the assembly hall, the School Hall also saw use as a gymnasium and had its complement of swing-out climbing bars and ropes, plus vaulting horses, benches and other fitness aids like those dreadfully un-bouncy medicine balls. It was also the place where all those years of study bore fruit, or not, as the case may be. There one sat in well-separated, single desks to take one’s G.C.E. exams. In between struggling for inspiration or some ill-remembered facts with which to answer the questions, it was easy to drift off into a reverie, in the quiet, sunny atmosphere, watching the chalky dust motes, permanently suspended in the air and marking the geometry of the sunbeams. I imagine that with the reduced use of chalk on blackboards, schools no longer have that permanent cloud of chalk everywhere?

The hall was at its best on the last day of term, when one attended the final term assembly in the afternoon. The final hymn was always “Lord dismiss us with thy blessing” – one of my favourites. The same hymn with different words to mark the first assembly of a new term was far less popular. The new school year was also marked with a certain tension as one listened to hear which class and teacher one had been allocated to. Was I also one of the few who sometimes feared being kept back a year for lack of academic progress? It never happened to me, but how sorry we felt for those few who were. I expect “George” was right, I had the ability but didn’t always use it. One year, having expressed extreme displeasure at my class achievements, he thought to shake me up a bit by giving me holiday homework during the summer holidays. I had to take his note of censure to four masters in succession asking them to set me up to six hours homework for the holidays. “George” meant six hours per subject, I think, but when questioned by the masters, I innocently expressed the view that it probably meant 6 hours across all four subjects. They either naively accepted my view or went along with the fiction to cut down their marking load. Headmasters didn’t always win the battle of wits with scheming schoolboys!

The Head's Study normally had a line of miscreants outside after morning assembly, either awaiting a ticking off or even the cane. For a really serious offence, just a short step away from suspension or expulsion the caning might even be in public during assembly; Borden's version of public execution !My misdemeanours were only ever academic and never attracted corporal retribution.

In the same vicinity was the Deputy Head's "office" virtually a small store cupboard. Here lived "Dusty", Mr. Ashby, a really nice man who took physics and biology and was responsible for explaining the facts of life to our testosterone-laden population. He explained it by going on at length about the activities of frogs and then concluding with the advice that humans did it much the same way. The ramifications of what he had said, didn't get through to me until I was walking home on the day of the lesson in question, along Sheerness High Street. I was shocked at the thought of what Mum and Dad had been doing but my puritanical reaction knew no bounds at the thought that the Queen and Prince Philip also must "do it"!

At the eastern end of the school building, on the ground floor were two further classrooms, the last, No. 8, being Mr. Anderton's - "Chubb". The origin of his name was very obscure although his rather portly frame made it seem very apt. He was rather like the late Willy Rushton, the satirist and co-founder of "Private Eye", but without a beard. He took us for history and again sadly, although quite a nice chap, inspired little interest in his subject unless you were already a history buff.

When we got to his lessons, we would find him well into the task of filling a blackboard with tiny, hand-written notes relating to that day's period and theme, which we then had laboriously, to copy into our own exercise books. Anybody that carried away an interest in history, did so in spite of that sort of teaching and not because of it. I suppose that the apparent obsession with 19th century political history reflected the curriculum imposed by the G.C.E. exam boards? Perhaps Chubb lit a small spark however, since I now find History an absorbing subject.

Next to rooms 1 and 8 at each end of the building were the stone stairs leading to the first floor, where there were two, I think, further classrooms, plus the physics and chemistry labs., the former the domain of "Old Joe",-Joe Dawkins who had been a pupil at the school before World War I, went away to serve his country, survived the carnage, returned to teacher training and University and then back to Borden for most of his life. He was probably a kindly man but of very stern countenance and an absolute disciplinarian. His lessons were conducted in absolute silence and when he turned to the blackboard to write, if you spoke to your neighbour or even coughed, uncannily he always seemed to know who was responsible and without turning round would say "Thank you, Butler" (or whoever) and nothing more.

It was enough, and one cringed in fear thereafter. However he never got impatient at one's lack of understanding of the subject and was always held in high regard by senior pupils.

The chemistry lab. was the home of "Smiler" Davies. Then, the normal nickname of all chemistry masters was "Stinker". However Smiler’s mouth had a permanent downturn, hence his nickname. Although interesting, I found both chemistry and physics beyond me at that time and when, in the third year, we had to select an Arts or Science path to G.C.E.'s and the future, I left science behind.

However, some 25 years later and thanks to the inspired teaching methods of the Open University, I re-entered the world of science and technology and thoroughly enjoyed the wonders revealed.

At the western end of the building on the upper floor was the canteen, where I only endured school dinners for the first year. That’s probably unfair as the meals appeared to have been freshly cooked on the premises and although not offering the variety now enjoyed by schoolchildren, were reasonable by the standards of the day, with not a turkey twizzler in sight. One boy on our table occasionally used to bring in a small bottle of his mother’s home-made, savoury, fruit sauce. The additional flavour that provided was always welcome. The canteen was too small for the total number of diners in the school and tables were set up in the corridor outside and there were two lunch (we called it dinner) sittings. The canteen walls were hung with school photos and at the time of my last visit about 1994, the year photo for 1956 or 1957 was still on display with a young me in one of the rows.

After the first year I took sandwiches every day for lunch. The small band of us that preferred this were put in Room 1 during the meal break. The room must have smelt of all the various sandwich fillings for a while in the afternoon lessons. One day, one of our number was sitting eating his sandwiches playing with a small ammunition shell case, probably from an aircraft cannon. As it had no projectile and appeared empty, everybody assumed it to be a spent one. However the percussion cap was still live and him banging it on his satchel caused it to explode driving shards of metal and powder into his face. The rest of us were deafened for a while and of course pandemonium broke out. He was carted off to hospital but luckily, apart from some small scars, suffered no lasting injury. I imagine that there was a big enquiry as to where he'd got the shell. but in those days just 10 years after the war, old ammunition was common currency amongst school boys.

The masters had a common room above the head's study where one never dared enter other than by very special invite. From the doorway, which is as far as one normally got, all one could see were battered old armchairs, teacups, piles of exercise books and filled ashtrays with a dominant atmospheric fug of pipe and cigarette smoke. The prefects also had a common room in the corner of the first floor, above Room 6. Then, there were no further pupil facilities such as 6th form common rooms. Mind you, apart from not being that enlightened, the School was too small anyway.

Another legacy of my time there is the cracked panel in one of the Hall storeroom doors next to the stage. This resulted from Mr. Hopkins, a P.E. master of brief tenure, demonstrating what part of a boxing glove should make contact with an opponent. His stay at the school was brief, but not because of that. He was Welsh (very), and introduced Rugby to the school for one glorious year. Even though George Hardy the Head and several masters had obviously, from their hunched stances, played a lot of Rugby when younger, I don't think it was very popular among the staff or perhaps pupils and it didn't survive Mr. Hopkin's departure as a school sport. It is said that Rugby is a ruffian's game played by gentlemen and Soccer is a gentlemen's game played by ruffians. I thoroughly enjoyed my brief experience of rugby and wish that it had been adopted by the school.

Another P.E. master of only a few years' tenure was Mr.Storey. He was very diminutive and was normally called "Shorty" (naturally). Surprisingly, it was he that introduced basketball to Borden. It was an instant and raging success and survived as a school sport ever after. For the first few years, Borden was the only school in Kent playing it and consequently we normally represented the County in National competitions. My height gave me an advantage in playing it although I never had the skill to make the school or even form team. No matter, I thoroughly enjoyed the "playtime" and after-school games. I was also one of the privileged club who banded together to purchase a proper basketball for use at these times. Our enthusiasm resulted in us playing this or football to exhaustion at the dinner break, to the detriment of our concentration in the first afternoon period.

French was taken originally by "Sniffer" Snelling and subsequently by "Jim" Howard. "Sniffer" was short and extremely dapper, a little like Michael Parkinson the broadcaster to look at, and seemed to spend a lot of the lessons scratching his nose and surreptitiously exploring its depths. Whilst we boys were reading French prose from “En Marche” or “En Route”, probably sounding like Edward Heath in our command of French pronunciation, "Jim" spent most of his time attempting to relieve the itch which obviously plagued his lower limbs permanently.

"Jim" was also always smartly dressed and even sported a buttonhole occasionally. Perhaps taking French made one chic? It certainly seemed to make one itch a lot. I think Jim Howard was also an "Old Boy" who had returned to the Alma Mater.

Maths was taken for most of my school life by "Tot" Wheatley who prefaced every sentence by a long drawn out "Er-----" or an almost insuperable stutter, which however, was not due, I found out in 2006, to World War I shell-shock but was a long-term speech impediment. He also suffered from a complete lack of hair apart from a ruff of it round the back of his head. He was fairly short-sighted, requiring him to almost spreadeagle himself against the blackboard, when writing upon it. I was always surprised at the accuracy of his geometric constructions on the blackboard, when using the primitive instruments at his command, large wooden protractors, rulers and compasses able to take a stick of chalk. Then, all teaching was with the aid of chalk on blackboards although towards the end of my time at Borden, the solid wooden blackboards were being replaced by rolling, canvas "boards". However, no sign then of dry-wipe boards, overhead projectors, televisions or any of today's visual aids. Photographic aids comprised slide and still film projectors, "Geoger" (pronounced Jogger) Hill's enormous and antiquated epidiascope and the occasional, supreme treat of a 16mm. movie film, perhaps even with sound! Maps in our exercise books were reproduced by a rolling rubber stamp.

Geoger's nickname was obviously derived from his subject of Geography, one which I followed and enjoyed through to "O" level. He was quite elderly in the 1950's, but an obituary in a national paper discovered by my sister in the early 1990's, indicated that he survived to a good age. He was very swarthy with a long and very wrinkled face, perhaps the effect of a lot field trips? This earned him the occasional alternative nickname of "Prune", which must have been quite hurtful. Nevertheless he was very popular and in the last week of term, would treat us to a lot of slide and film shows or periods when we could just read "National Geographic" magazine, of which he seemed to have an inexhaustible supply. We would sometimes have geography based quizzes. The latter included cryptic questions from the Daily Telegraph crossword of which, he was a fan. For example, "Where the cockney parent brings home the bacon?" (Answer - Faversham [Farver's ham]) It was amusing at the time.

The school day was divided into 7 periods of about 35 -40 minutes duration each and I think the morning was usually 4 periods, irrespective of whether one was first sitting for dinner or second. The timetable below shows the mix and it was only in the 6th form that one had a lot of "free" periods Timetable from when I was in L6A briefly in 1960. The double period on Friday afternoon, made a perfect end to a week.

In our first year, we had no permanent desk, only a locker in the corridor. Thereafter we each had our own allocated desk, plus our own numbered peg in the cloakroom.

In spite of compulsory prayers at morning assembly, (unless you had a parental note that religious beliefs prevented participation and were thus allowed to stand outside during morning prayers) we were not a very religious lot. Religion was taught as R.I. (Religious Instruction) or R.E.(Religious Education). The distinction was lost on me. I always felt sorry for the R.I. masters who in spite of their obvious personal beliefs and commitment, had to go through hell (or Purgatory, at least) to try to enlighten or enthuse us. Mr. Bishop ("Old Bish") was one such but he was fairly commanding and had little problem controlling us. Another was Mr. Jennings ("Old Jankers"). He was short and lacked presence and some took full advantage of it. A pity, because he was a really nice chap, probably in his late 20's and also took us for History with a great deal more enthusiasm than Old Chubb. Even masters no more than 10 years older than their pupils would still attract the term “Old—“. Mr Jennings was easily embarrassed and would flush bright red alarmingly when things got out of hand. I probably have a soft spot for him as the only master ever to award me a prize for a project I did about the London Underground Railway System. The prize was a book of my choosing, which I still have, about modelling buildings. It wasn't in by Prize-giving Day so I had to be content with a handshake from the distinguished Old Boy on that day! Our History set at that time only comprised about 7 or 8 of us so I think we virtually all got prizes for History projects that year. We went on a mini field trip one lesson to visit some local old churches or buildings and either had to take our own or borrow somebody's bike to get there. One boy that day, came on one of his collection of antique bikes, a Penny-Farthing. Mr. Jennings asked to have a go and made the common mistake of flinging his weight forward as he mounted, the frame swivelled about the 5 foot high front wheel and “Jankers” ended up in a heap on the ground endeavouring to escape the clutches of this ancient monster, more embarrassed and red than I had ever seen him. I hope that he recognised that this small group of devotees were laughing more in sympathy than derision.

The year after the final end of World War II, 1946, all the demobbed servicemen returning home created a population explosion, with the consequence that there was a large "bulge" in the school population throughout the country which hit the Secondary schools two years after my arrival. This required the "bulge" year to have an extra form in its progress through the school. The population went back to normal expansion thereafter but an increasing amount of new development in the area, resulted in more eligible, youngsters which the school had to accommodate and the increase in school numbers continues to this day. I think the school roll is now at least twice what it was in the 1950's. During my second year the building was expanded by first floor extensions over the changing room wings at either end of the rear of the building. During my last year the old cricket pavilion on the edge of the school field was used with increasing frequency as an overspill classroom. This was before the almost universal use of so-called mobile classrooms. Subsequently however, the playground where I played so many enjoyable games of basketball, disappeared under a township of mobiles and they in their turn have now been replaced in 1998 by permanent two storey extensions to the original buildings. The architectural theme is somewhat marred by the large iron anti-vandal and anti-theft grilles over every window. Had they used the small paned, metal Crittall windows of the original design, they wouldn’t have needed the additional security. I suppose that with every pupil now having access to computers, there's a lot more worth stealing nowadays?

Swimming was included as part of the sports curriculum in my early years at Borden but I think that it became optional once one went into the Arts or Science streams in the third year.. We had no pool facilities on site and had to retrace our steps towards Sittingbourne Station usually in a loose form of crocodile which we disliked as "kid-like", where the municipal pool was situated close to the station. It was a fairly old pool and on reflection, probably fairly run down. The changing facilities were different from what the Sheppey boys were used to. At the "Aquarena" at Sheerness, one was issued with a wire basket with built in coat hanger and trouser rail which one "loaded" and returned to the attendant for storage until one retrieved it subsequently, if one remembered the correct number on the metalwork of the basket. Often one could see some forgetful soul wandering up and down the lines of hanging possessions in the company of a disgruntled attendant, searching for some familiar garment to identify the correct basket. In those days one was issued with no form of token to indicate rightful ownership. At Sittingbourne there was just a free for all for the available changing cubicles, many of which lacked doors (I was painfully shy then, like most teenagers), and after changing one left one's clothes in the cubicle, hoping that there were no thieves about, a vain hope sometimes. As we arrived for our half-hour swim, we were sometimes excited to encounter the tail end of a group from one of the local girls schools, leaving. They were usually just wandering out with hair still awry and wet, God knows what fever of excitement would have swept over us if we had seen them in swimming costumes!

One year by some awful error or desperation on the part of the house captain, I ended up in the house relay team for the annual swimming gala. This required a diving start from the side in front of a cheering school audience with some parents and various old boys and other dignitaries. I could neither dive nor swim and breathe at the same time, least of all when doing the crawl. Lacking the courage to tell anybody I lined up on the side in the proper swallow-dive pose and when my team mate touched the side just launched myself blindly and swam for all I was worth. The first second or so I was underwater and thus spared the indignity of hearing what must have been a thunderclap-like belly-flop. I survived the trial but never capitalised on the experience by learning to dive properly until I managed to overcome my fears of hurt, ridicule and belly-flops when I learned to dive properly some 30 years later when on holiday in Portugal. That was when I first managed to swim underwater with my eyes open! I think that ability is a pre-requisite for natural swimming and breathing in the water.

The shyness experienced in the changing rooms was even worse at school when one was required to have showers after cross-country running or other strenuous sport. The showers were communal with no privacy and for many, like me, brought up in an atmosphere where one did not display one's body I found it excruciatingly embarrassing, especially as one developed body hair. Many seemed to take it in their stride. They were either a lot more emancipated than me, more confident and possibly regular sportsmen who had got used to all that exposure and contact. I would avoid showers if possible but this must have left me and the others of similar disposition, stinking to high heaven for the rest of the school day and beyond.

Strangely in spite of that shyness, during the years of puberty, one was becoming more inclined to display one's body and most of us hitched our shorts up during sports to display fine muscular thighs or whatever it was we thought we were showing. I also longed for a pair of brief swimming trunks with lace up sides instead of the voluminous, hand-me-down, woollen ones which I usually got stuck with.

It was not only as part of a swimming team, that I found myself representing the school house or form. One year, my form was due to play football against the other form in our year. I can only think that some epidemic had carried off a lot of our normal players as the team list that went up, for the first time, included me. However, the team captain compounded his error by putting me in goal. Why on earth he thought that was the place I could do least damage, is beyond me. In the event, I let in 13 goals! However, the other team were also having a bad day. They changed their goalie four times and between them, they also managed to let in 13 goals. Thus it was a draw. When George the headmaster, announced the result at assembly the next morning, it had the distinction of being the highest score line of any inter-form match in the school’s history. At least I managed to contribute to the record all on my own. The other team had to keep changing goalie to equal my incompetence. George did not seem amused by the result and nobody in my form talked to me for days! Peculiar that!

Strangely, I loved playing football, when the result didn’t matter. I was one of those who would play furiously during the break times, as well as at lunchtime once we had eaten. The first lesson of the afternoon often seemed to be spent, beetroot red from the previous exertions and sweating profusely. It must have been delightful for the masters. One year, thick persistent fog had put the field out of bounds for several days. Desperate to play football still, a large group of us would hover along the edge of the playground and when we thought we were unobserved by prefects or masters, slip off into the fog, to the far side of the field where we played a sort of football where one could barely pick out other players! The masters taking the lesson after would have to have been particularly unobservant not to have noticed our usual rubicund features and freshly muddy shoes and trousers. However, I suspect that it was easier to turn a blind eye than risk being dragged from the warmth of the staff room to act as additional sentinels on foggy days.

For sports, the year was divided into three with cricket and field sports prevailing in the Summer term. The athletics included all the usual activities, running, hurdling, high and long jumps, pole vaulting, discus, shot and javelin. It was only some years into my school life that we had the benefit of modern aluminium javelins. Previously we had used steel-tipped bamboo ones. Like choosing timber at modern d-i-y stores, one had to sort through the pile to find a straight one. The landing area for the high jump was I’m sure, just a sand-pit, so the landing could be a bit hard. Not for us the piles of mattresses cosseting modern, high jumpers.

There was a single, grass, tennis court in the corner of the field at Borden Grammar but I only ever saw it used by prefects and perhaps masters. Since it adjoined and was overlooked by the Head’s house, there was little chance of unauthorised use, even in fog!

Autumn term was the time for football and indoor sports training and the Spring term brought hockey to our fields. Borden had a generous area of playing fields at its rear. Each year, possibly due to the size of our fields but more likely due to the convenient location halfway down the County, Borden acted as host for the County’s Grammar School Hockey Tournament. Our fields were big enough to accommodate about six pitches, so the competition heats could proceed throughout a single day. The rest of the school was permitted to leave lessons early to see the final match. I think that Borden always did well, thanks to good players and also a large crowd of partisan supporters.

Also in Spring term, we had to suffer the rigours of cross-country runs. I always seemed to get a stitch before the school was out of sight. Our route normally took us out towards Highsted, where we had to run along a path alongside the girls school. I doubt that our passing set their hearts a-flutter, but probably provided some amusement, especially the beetroot-coloured ones, panting along at the rear.

There were some "practical" lessons at Borden and in the first year I took woodwork. A bit like art teaching then, woodwork was taught in a somewhat ritual manner and the first project for every pupil, every year, was to make a pencil box with a sliding lid and dovetailed corners. To call my effort primitive was raising it a notch or two. I think we were taught the rudiments of beeswax polishing but never touched a lathe and of course then we had no power tools at all, so everything had to be done by hand and little of the joy of working with wood and bringing out its qualities was imparted to us. There was little chance of any potential Grinling Gibbons or Thomas Chippendale emerging from Borden. As with Art, the woodwork master, "Wally" Weeks was popular with the boys and good at the subject himself but didn't enthuse me for woodwork very much then, although I now enjoy it immensely as a hobby. I think that Wally must have been a lot younger than we thought, as meeting him again at an Old Bordenians’ reunion in the mid 1990's, revealed him to look not a lot older than his early '60's.

In 1959 my family moved to Strood from Sheerness, but as I was heading for my G.C.E. “O” levels, the K.E.C. agreed it would be too disruptive at that point, to require me to transfer to a Medway school and for my final year at Borden I had quite a long journey by bus and train each day.

Thanks to having gone on a school exchange trip to France in 1957 and spending a month in France with a French family, my newly acquired knowledge and ability in the language took me from my usual class position in the lower quarter to being in the top three both in class and exams. Consequently, I took and passed my French “O” level a year early when I was 14. However, I didn’t shine in much else and had to wait until the fifth year as normal, to take other subjects.

I took my G.C.E. "O" levels in the summer of 1960 and having got passes in all the subjects I took, my best grade being in Art, I went back to school in the Autumn term and entered the Lower Sixth Form. Some of my contemporaries were elevated to the god-like status of prefects but with our mutual antipathy it was unlikely that George Hardy the Head would ever have considered me so worthy. He and I never saw eye to eye during all the time I was at Borden. He had the distinction when he finally retired, of being the then, longest-serving head. I suspect that his knowledge of boys and their wiles was better than mine of headmasters and he probably recognised in me a bit of a skiver who was "coasting" and who could have done more. He had the manner, build and voice of Alastair Sim and would have suited the headmaster’s role had the fictional St. Trinians been a boys school.

After a term of somewhat lackadaisical academic effort and achievement in Lower Sixth Arts, I left in December 1960, effectively without a job to go to. I had attended a few interviews at the Youth Employment Bureau at Fort Pitt House, Rochester, with Mr. Colenutt(!), the Youth Employment Officer and had been issued with a bewildering number of leaflets about various careers but with little useful guidance or analysis of my own skills and interests. Career guidance at Borden comprising a fifteen minute chat with one of the masters, had been perfunctory, to say the least. My interest in Architecture at school and practical bent had some compatibility with the property industry and prior to leaving Borden, I had an interview with the senior partner of Darleys the estate agents in Chatham, a thriving firm of multi-office Estate Agents and Surveyors run by Major Darley. He offered to train me as an estate agent and surveyor, taking the exams of the Chartered Auctioneers' and Estate Agents' Institute and to start me on a salary of £3 per week. In fact this wasn't bad as at that time, there were still young men of my age going into employment as trainee surveyors and estate agents as articled pupils, where they or their parents had to pay the firm for the training in the form of a premium, some of which may be received back as a weekly or monthly salary. It was very close to the old indentured apprentice system in the crafts' guilds. However, much to my disappointment, my Dad thought that the wages offered were inadequate and wouldn't let me take the job. I then got a job with a firm of licensed property brokers at a starting salary of £5 per week – much better! Eventually, I joined the firm’s residential surveying and valuing side and ended up as a Chartered Surveyor. As it turned out, I had set out on a career path which although not the most lucrative of professions, resulted in me doing a job which matched my skills and interests admirably. However that's another story!

My experience of Borden, which some other old boys seem to share is that if one didn’t excel academically or on the sports field, then the school would not waste too much time on you. However, in retrospect and without my spectacles being too rose-tinted, I enjoyed my years at Borden Grammar as these nostalgic reminiscences indicate and I think it was a good place to be educated. It was my fault if I didn’t always take advantage of it at the time.

© John Butler January 2008