Trevor will be teaching Religious Studies this year. He claims that it is a “Good doss and an easy "A" level.” The latter is the reason why Steve, Mark and I will be devoting a considerable portion of the day to finding out the difference between Sunni and Sufi Muslims. We have already passed the “O” level and I was rather pleased to get a “B” for my efforts.
Footnotes
1. Retired as Head of the Richard Lander School, Truro 2008
Editors note: A look at a copy of Cook's timetable (below) for the week suggests that considerable was something of an understatement. Whether this was unique to Cook or other members of the sixth form had similar weeks is unknown. However it is interesting that the vast majority of Cook's diary entries for the period make little or no mention of either classrooms or learning. An initial reading of the entries for the period almost suggests a elongated coffee break, whether this a fair assessment or he simply failed to record academic issues is not clear.
Cook's diary continues...
I don't trust Trevor. His 'lets subvert the system' approach seems a bit unfeasible to me. He is scathing to the point of rudeness about many of his colleagues, especially our esteemed leader Mrs Orme but on very good terms with many of the pupils, in particular the ones who generally cause the maximum amount of trouble for other less cunning members of the staff. Hmm.. actually I have just looked at the last paragraph and realised what I said. OK, he's a smart man who wants to keep his tyres unslashed and his windscreen egg free..!
Later: Steve and I find the new intake of sixth formers in the library, which in the absence of anywhere else for the 6th form to go, is being used a common room. It seems as good a time as any to try and put faces to the list of names I have been given.
Stuart Jo
nes: Stuart I know, we have acted together a couple of years earlier in what Gaynesford called dramas, but we usually referred to as total and complete fuck ups.(1) At the time, he was a sex obsessed pest of the first order; a loud mouthed braggart whose vistas extended no further than his next sexual conquest and subsequent pint. Watching him in the library, it occurs to me that he may have got worse. It also occurs to me that I am probably incredibly jealous!Lee Burrowes: Appears frighteningly similar to Jones. According to Pat Graham he is something of a whiz kid when it comes to the sciences. But at this precise moment, he is engaged in a loud argument about which girls have the biggest boobs. The fact that the girls in question are only a few feet away doesn't appear to worry either of them. Curiously it does not seem to bother the girls as well! Lee boasts membership of an alternative religion called Ekankar. (2)
Ashokbai (Ashok) Patel: Our token Indian Sixth Former. He is sitting there listening to Lee and Stuart and not saying a word.
Raymond
Morris: This one is odd, even by the standards of Gaynesford. All he talks about is cars. The first mention of anything even remotely related to the subject and he seemingly materializes next to you. I have no idea what Ray is studying but if there is an O level in cars then he is a shoo-in for a grade A.Nicholas Rowe: While no one in the room is going to win an award for cleverness. The presence of Nick Rowe in even Gaynesford's Sixth Form intake proves what a complete joke the idea of an academically excellent sixth form has turned out to be. Nick has yet to progress as far as CSEs It seems unlikely that he will get much farther than his current role as official school bell ringer, a role in which Nick takes great pride. I have no idea what he is studying, but I got the impression that he was allowed to stay on just to keep him off the dole queue.
Editors note: Cook is probably being a little unfair on Nicholas Rowe who may well have been a victim of the complicated system of qualifications that existed in the latter part of the 20th Century. Nick was in all probability studying for Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) this was a lower qualification to that of General Certificate Education (GCE) also known as an 'O' level. The records show that Cook whose academic career had been less than glittering, had come to the sixth form to do O levels having completed CSE's to a standard where the school would consider his inclusion for another year. Rowe having possibly failed his CSE exams may well have been using the sixth year as a chance to leave education with at least some qualifications. In that at least Gaynesford is probably to be applauded. Of course a cynic might suggest that numbers on the sixth form roll was also a factor.
Cook's first sixth year had been one which had attempted to develop a sixth form focused on 'A' levels but this idea seems to have been abandoned fairly quickly in favour of the numbers game, all concerned agreed that a well packed sixth form was far more likely to attract funding from the local education authority (LEA) than a poorly attended one however high flying the contingent.
Cook's diary continues...
Alan Davis: A walking and above all talking lexicon of the cliché. His only - and I do mean only - contribution to several hours of conversation in the library was to say, “This is it!” “Well there you have it," and "Nuff said!” I formed the impression that Alan rarely understood anything that was happening around him. If this is the full complement of sixth formers we are significantly down on last year which in its turn was slightly less than the previous one. Its possible that I have missed some people, but according to my list this does appear to be it!
Beverley Simmons: A very attractive girl and as I watch the centre of attraction for Jones, Burrowes and several of the others. Beverley is not new to me, two years previously she had 'starred' in a school Christmas play called “The Little Match Girl”, about a young Victorian girl slowly freezing in the snow who wishes three times. Each wish was the signal for a dance or other musical piece from 1st 2nd and 3rd year pupils who had been conscripted to assist. I had played the role of the narrator, a role I had only agreed to when it dawned on me that as the narrator I could have my script concealed in the 'book' I was reading from.
Editors note: Cook was in the habit of updating and adding to his diary as either something new came back to his memory or additional information was made available to him through meetings with former Gaynesford pupils. In later years this became quite formalized with additional indexed and cross referenced. We have included a brief segment on “The Little Match Girl” which occurred in a 1983 diary.
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It was memorable for me for a number of reasons: Firstly it was one of my earlier appearances on stage when being in front of some 800 kids still had the power to terrify me and Beverley was insistent that we should have a physical effect for her matches. She opined that the lighting effect - that of a halo of light around her each time she struck a match would not be as effective as the light from a real Swan Vesta! I was not sure about this, but Bev stuck to her guns and we compromised with both the lighting effect and the matches which I was convinced would not work on the night and would force me to repeat the line “She lit the first/second/third match.”numerous times until one did - much to the puzzlement of the audience. Of course I was right and the repetitions rapidly found favour with the assembled piss-takers and Neanderthals.
Secondly the the use of a strobe light for some of the dance interludes in the story which left me feeling very odd afterwards. I discovered that some helpful soul had set it to 24 flashes a second since this seemed to suit the action on the stage and give the dancers in the "money" scenes a note of robotic strangeness (they already had a note of strangeness in general) but 24 a second is the pattern most likely to cause epilepsy and the light was positioned directly across the stage from my position as the storyteller on a lectern stage left. By the end of the show I felt very odd indeed.
And finally a note of total panic when Beverley had decided to take her costume home and 'alter' it, this consisted on cutting even more holes in the skirt to give her more of an ''urchin' look. Urchin being a phrase she had learnt from me and was keen to use it. Only belatedly did she realise that the only thing under the skirt was Beverley. Belatedly in this sense was when she donned the outfit about an hour before the show was due to start. Briefly she refused to go on stage and there was a fairly loud and robust debate between her and Tony Raven our director before our little urchin relented. The script had called for her to sit in one corner observing each 'entertainment' that followed the lighting of the three matches that were the staple parts of the tale. Having cut her skirt to shreds and worried that the highlight of the show would be a view of her knickers and bra, Beverley opted for a tight huddled ball for each performance, this gave the impression that she was terrified by the things she was viewing on the stage rather than fascinated by them. Fortunately, for us, some of the dance performances were so mind bogglingly horrible that the mental image of pain Beverley projected was probably considered part of the act. For some years after my personal definition of world class embarrassingly awful was a bunch of 13/14 year old girls dressed in leotards dancing to "Money" by The Flying Lizards
I think it was 'Match Girl' that put me off doing Gaynesford performances, although with the exception of the high value performance like 'My Fair Lady' and 'Annie Get Your Gun' most were pretty awful!The Flying Lizards and "Money" one of the songs used for the musical piece "The Little Match Girl."
***
Cook's diary continues...Diane Downham: Diane is a rarity in this group, someone I actually know. Diane and I have been involved in a series of Gaynesford dramatic productions. It didn’t take a genius to work out that she was probably trying to garner sufficient qualifications to enable her to get into some theatre-school or other. While wishing her luck I wondered if any attempt to get qualifications out of a GHS sixth form is a futile effort.
Diane's inclusion in any any play or performance was almost mandatory and along with Stuart she formed the remainder of what had been a core of pupils who had performed plays such as “Annie Get Your Gun!” and the highly successful “My Fair Lady”
Karen Tho
mas: Our academic high flier. Karen is the pupil that the school is pinning its hopes on for major academic success, far more than Steve, Mark, and I. In that sense, we were the pacesetters for the race and Karen will be the winner. Beside she is currently slatted to head for university which Steve and I can only boast rather paltry polytechnics. Interesting then that she did not get the head girl accolade. There is a rumour that she is religious and actually goes to church on a regular basis.Colleen Friday: If, as I am told, Colleen is Irish for “girl” then Mr and Mrs Friday must have a strange sense of humour indeed. Like Beverley definitely on the right side of gorgeous. Her boyfriend was a member of the Sixth Form last year.
Lea Hensman: Our one time Head Girl, now deposed. Lea was what was known in the local parlance as a grafter. She had little aptitude for study but an over riding desire to succeed. She had, during the previous year, vanished for long periods, claiming that the atmosphere in Gaynesford was not conducive to study. Of course this has pissed off the staff, since there was one less soldier available for the informal guard duties at various entrances to the school.
The truth of the matter is that Lea was quite right, study was all but impossible. Steve, Mark, and I got round this by simply not studying - this might not have been the best strategy on reflection. There are, according to my list, other members of the Sixth, hopefully I will meet them as the week’s progress.
It occurs to me later as I am looking at the list of names that these people all know one another, and from their point of view it is Steve Mark and I who are the outsiders, just with the exception of Diane and Lea, we consider them to the new intake. In the parlance of the school they are “first year sixth” while Steve, Mark, Lea and I rejoice in the title of “third year sixth”.
As far as I know Diane and Stuart are the only survivors of the previous “first” to make it to “second." (3)
Later: I met with Tracy Piner who is Lea's replacement for head girl, for the first time. Tracy is serious, academic and smitten with the idea that she has been appointed as Head Girl. She gives every impression that she plans to use the opportunity to do something. I foresee problems.
Editors note: Helen Orme's desire to control the normally anarchistic pupils can be seen from her speech notes for the first full assembly of the year. We have published them below.
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PicturesClick image for full size view.-----------------------------------------------------------
1. Stuart Jones circa 1980
2. Karen Thomas circa 1980
3. Ray Morris circa 1980
Footnotes:
1. Cook is being less than fair although perhaps for laudable reasons given his own less than stellar performance. One of the things that Gaynesford High did well and in some cases very well indeed was stage musicals. While the pupils may have been less than gifted academically, there was a skill core of performers, the nucleus of which was probably Stuart Jones, Diane Downham and to a lesser extent Ron Cook. The school's failure to capitalize and build on this core would have repercussions later in the year.
2. Eckankar Eckankar a religious movement that focuses on spiritual exercises enabling practitioners to "experience the Light and Sound of God." Founded by Paul Twitchell in 1965, Sri Harold Klemp has been the spiritual leader of Eckankar since October 1981. According to the Eckankar glossary, the term Eckankar means "Co-Worker with God". It is likely drawn from the Sikh term, Ik Onkar. Since 1985, Eckankar is described as “The Religion of the Light and Sound of God”. (Prior to 1985, Eckankar changed the descriptor following its name several times.)
3. In an environment where pupils sometimes needed to remain for 3 years in a sixth form to complete both ordinary and advanced level exams, seniority was not to the fore, however in Cook's diaries he is in the habit of describing sixth formers by the number of years they had been resdent. Thus, he and Steve Johnson along with Mark Powell and Lea Hensmen were all "third year sixth", Stuart and Diane were "second year" and the reminder of the sixth were term first years. Later when there was far greater homogenity Cook dropped this descriptor from this writings.
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