John Comer and 'The Old Time'

[John Comer]

Dear Old Boys

I was at the RGS between 1954 and 1961 with a brief excursion to Simon Langton Grammar in Canterbury when my mother moved down there to work. You remember me because I was the one who let you into the tuck shop queue that time you were really desperate, and do you remember, I took your place in detention that time Crappy Hett kept you in - just so that you could sneak off down town and see that little trollop, Marcia, from the High School.

By the way, you still owe me a packet of crisps for that.

I am currently living in Birmingham and look pretty set to stay here. After school I went to Leeds University (as some of you will be aware who read my piece on Geoff Boireau elsewhere) and managed to get a grant to stay on for another couple of years of English studies I drifted into part-time teaching at various colleges in Leeds for a few years and eventually went back to university to do a PGCE and became a full-time Music teacher at Thornes House school in Wakefield. Two years there and the opportunity came to teach at Greengates School in Mexico City. The Art teacher at Wakefield had gone there the year before and wrote to me saying that if I wanted to have a fridge full of steaks and to enjoy the benefits of a wonderful climate and to finish teaching at 2 in the afternoon I should get my tail there pronto. I went. Four years in Mexico and then back to England with a wife and four children (three step-children, I hasten to add). Worked in London and then a year in El Salvador teaching at an English speaking school, teaching English this time.

Back to England again teaching English in Birmingham, moving into Special Schools, moving from senior teacher to a Deputy Head, and then into IT and teaching adults. And then, by force of circumstance, I retired and have since been in Brum, a cheerful optimist as ever I was.

I have a daughter, Alexis, aged 40 next year, a son, Jack, 27, (nearly 8), the three step-children already alluded to in their thirties and forties, and I can state categorically that I HAVE DONE MY BIT FOR THE WORLD'S CHILDREN. I can cook spaghetti bolognaise for five out of a tin of dog food, I can take a party of nine on a trip to the Yorkshire Dales and spend less than a fiver, I can wash up blindfold doing handstands on one leg. I love children, of course. But couldn't they be grown on farms like Triffids?

At 67 I am feeling my age, through some sight-impairment, hip- and knee-pain, but I still managed to get up Snowden in October last year and generally did more walking in the autumn than ever before. Walking is the new motoring, I am beginning to say to people. Walking is like driving used to be 100 years ago, an open road, a few stragglers here and there, friendly conversation, cheap petrol and the great secret is - wait for it - it doesn't cost anything! It's free. IT"S FREE!

I'd like to add that, in the middle of all the comings and goings, eating dog food, I managed to write a fictionalized account of my early life, both at Primary School in West Wycombe and at the RGS in the days of E R Tucker, Sam Morgan, Crappy Hett and Doggy Scott. This is a novel in all but name, a life imagined as it would be in a story, which is how, in retrospect, that I remember it, in all its humour and oddity. What then, in childhood itself, seemed the most ordinary things in the world, now seem unique and unrepeatable, as all our childhoods are.

The amazon URL for the book is below. But first, why not read the unsolicited review of the book by our very own headmaster, John Saunders, in his July 2009 posting on the What's New? section of the current site.

12 July 2009: John Comer (RGS 1954-61) very kindly sent me a copy of his book The Old Time. It is an autobiography of his youth, encompassing his post-war upbringing in West Wycombe through to the summer of 1961 when he left the RGS for university. It is sensitively written and captures the essential 'otherness' of the 1950s and early 1960s from a distance. In the mid-1950s he moved out of the area for two years and attended a different school, enabling him to draw a fascinating comparison between life at another 1950s grammar school in Canterbury and the 'Ancien Régime' of Tucker/Morgan at the RGS to which he returned for a further four years in 1957. The aforementioned masters and one or two others are vividly portrayed in the book as are several of John's school friends. As well as depicting our old school at some length, the book evokes High Wycombe at the time, particularly the West Wycombe area where John grew up and received his primary schooling. I found it a delightful, nostalgic read and devoured the book in one sitting. It is replete with drama, subtle observation and humour, and I'm sure other OWs will enjoy it. Some will find themselves mentioned in its pages (in some cases, names have been changed to protect the innocent - and guilty). The Old Time by John Comer is available via Amazon, priced £6.99 plus postage.

You can view the book, read three reviews (including John's) and have a copy sent to you by first class post for LESS THAN A TENNER, by clicking on this site:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1425 ... -1&seller=

Click on '3 new from £6.99' and buy from 'greenoakmoods' which is not only me but you will get the book the following day if I catch your request in time.

Best wishes

John Comer