Manchester in 1956 was a backward kind of place.
After a second attempt I gained my 11 plus and was offered a place at Manchester Central Grammar School in Whitworth street, Central Manchester, i.e. in Town.
I took a bus from Gorton where I lived or, occasionally I walked to Belle Vue and took a train I was 11 years of age.
In Manchester, in 1956, parcels were still delivered by horse drawn carriage and the streets were decorated with horse poo.
As a youngster I recall discussing my ideal job with friends on the walk back from school and with no clear career plans at that stage we all thought that the ideal job should pay at least a £1000 a year.
I recall the Music Master, a Mr Rourke, who as a first year I encountered in my first music class.
We were rehearsing the school song Non Nobis Domine.
Now I am not and never have been much of a singer, I have a strong, clear, speaking voice, but when I try to sing my voice becomes weak and I am always out of Key.
Mr Rourke heard my tuneless drone beneath the otherwise tuneful voices of my fellow students and stopped the rehearsal, line by line he asked boys to sing which they did until he came to the line that I was in.
Isolating me, he asked me to sing, N n n n on N n n n obis D d d d omine i ventured. Striking me at first on the left side of my head and correcting my fall with a blow to the right, Mr Rourke declared, 'Never sing in my presence again'.
So for my first year I sat in the music class reading silently .....
I guess that the shame of it really has followed me my whole life, 73 next birthday I love music, I love reading, but I still can't sing.
But the real shame of it is that it starts to feel that the moggmentum (if I may) or the maybottism (if I may) or the johnsonism (if I may) or the whole Tory project appears to be a heralding of a steady drift backwards to the world I thought had long been improved upon.
The horse drawn carts did leave a certain degree of pollution, although as soon as they passed his front door my grandfather would be out with a shovel, he had the best roses in High Street, Droylsden.
Today's pollution is a miasmic mist of asthma inducing diesel fumes, particulates and old fashioned smog.
But worse than that, the horse drawn delivery wagon, had to deliver at the pace of the horse, it was a slow and stately progress not DPD, UBS, Yodel racing at breakneck speeds with drivers literally under the cosh if they fail to maintain their delivery schedules which if they are to achieve their deliveries on time requires an Amazonian effort.
A salary of £1000 annually is of course now a laughable idea, even a £1000 a week would be perceived as a modest wage even though it exceeds the national minimum wage comfortably.
But the aspiration we expressed as 11 year olds in grammar school was not the £1000 per se, it was the idea of living comfortably, within our means and having a happy life.
Now we hear constant reports from the front line of poverty, children slipping back into poverty, food banks, evictions, a constant flow of negative aspersions on those living with disability compared with much housing in a city like London, even (so called social housing) being bought by wealthy investors, young people (generation rent) unable to join the housing market and meanwhile just more mealy mouth posturing from politicians.
For too many people, as I know myself when I was a curate and a Vicar in the Church of England, too much week or month at the end of the money is a soul destroying reality for too many people impacting their self image and well being.
And education, eventually the rage became overwhelming, in my school one student leaped his desk, knife in hand too attack a teacher, he was expelled and, I believe, became a Butcher.
Today pupils are not normally knocked sideways and then knocked upright again, at least not by physical force, but the regimentation of learning takes the fun out of education, sideswiped by almost routine 'mock' examinations and then knocked back upright again by the real thing, students succeed against the odds to learn more than how to pass examinations.
Teachers also struggle with a system that removes any sense of responsibility for the way in which they help a range of students, who they know personally, by name and nature, but who are viewed by educational bureaucrats as commodities to be processed.
I hear quite routinely of the challenges facing teachers in the classroom, the so called 'chalkface', many of whom are seeking to find ways of leaving their profession in order o find more rewarding challenges elsewhere.
It is the shame of it really that in our globalised world where so many are moving forwards to new prosperity and where the quality of life is improving, that here in the UK we have been hijacked by a small group of illusionists who seem to have taken the theme of the film Back to the Future quite literally.
As Buddy Holly sang, 'That'll be the Day'.
After a second attempt I gained my 11 plus and was offered a place at Manchester Central Grammar School in Whitworth street, Central Manchester, i.e. in Town.
I took a bus from Gorton where I lived or, occasionally I walked to Belle Vue and took a train I was 11 years of age.
In Manchester, in 1956, parcels were still delivered by horse drawn carriage and the streets were decorated with horse poo.
As a youngster I recall discussing my ideal job with friends on the walk back from school and with no clear career plans at that stage we all thought that the ideal job should pay at least a £1000 a year.
I recall the Music Master, a Mr Rourke, who as a first year I encountered in my first music class.
We were rehearsing the school song Non Nobis Domine.
Now I am not and never have been much of a singer, I have a strong, clear, speaking voice, but when I try to sing my voice becomes weak and I am always out of Key.
Mr Rourke heard my tuneless drone beneath the otherwise tuneful voices of my fellow students and stopped the rehearsal, line by line he asked boys to sing which they did until he came to the line that I was in.
Isolating me, he asked me to sing, N n n n on N n n n obis D d d d omine i ventured. Striking me at first on the left side of my head and correcting my fall with a blow to the right, Mr Rourke declared, 'Never sing in my presence again'.
So for my first year I sat in the music class reading silently .....
I guess that the shame of it really has followed me my whole life, 73 next birthday I love music, I love reading, but I still can't sing.
But the real shame of it is that it starts to feel that the moggmentum (if I may) or the maybottism (if I may) or the johnsonism (if I may) or the whole Tory project appears to be a heralding of a steady drift backwards to the world I thought had long been improved upon.
The horse drawn carts did leave a certain degree of pollution, although as soon as they passed his front door my grandfather would be out with a shovel, he had the best roses in High Street, Droylsden.
Today's pollution is a miasmic mist of asthma inducing diesel fumes, particulates and old fashioned smog.
But worse than that, the horse drawn delivery wagon, had to deliver at the pace of the horse, it was a slow and stately progress not DPD, UBS, Yodel racing at breakneck speeds with drivers literally under the cosh if they fail to maintain their delivery schedules which if they are to achieve their deliveries on time requires an Amazonian effort.
A salary of £1000 annually is of course now a laughable idea, even a £1000 a week would be perceived as a modest wage even though it exceeds the national minimum wage comfortably.
But the aspiration we expressed as 11 year olds in grammar school was not the £1000 per se, it was the idea of living comfortably, within our means and having a happy life.
Now we hear constant reports from the front line of poverty, children slipping back into poverty, food banks, evictions, a constant flow of negative aspersions on those living with disability compared with much housing in a city like London, even (so called social housing) being bought by wealthy investors, young people (generation rent) unable to join the housing market and meanwhile just more mealy mouth posturing from politicians.
For too many people, as I know myself when I was a curate and a Vicar in the Church of England, too much week or month at the end of the money is a soul destroying reality for too many people impacting their self image and well being.
And education, eventually the rage became overwhelming, in my school one student leaped his desk, knife in hand too attack a teacher, he was expelled and, I believe, became a Butcher.
Today pupils are not normally knocked sideways and then knocked upright again, at least not by physical force, but the regimentation of learning takes the fun out of education, sideswiped by almost routine 'mock' examinations and then knocked back upright again by the real thing, students succeed against the odds to learn more than how to pass examinations.
Teachers also struggle with a system that removes any sense of responsibility for the way in which they help a range of students, who they know personally, by name and nature, but who are viewed by educational bureaucrats as commodities to be processed.
I hear quite routinely of the challenges facing teachers in the classroom, the so called 'chalkface', many of whom are seeking to find ways of leaving their profession in order o find more rewarding challenges elsewhere.
It is the shame of it really that in our globalised world where so many are moving forwards to new prosperity and where the quality of life is improving, that here in the UK we have been hijacked by a small group of illusionists who seem to have taken the theme of the film Back to the Future quite literally.
As Buddy Holly sang, 'That'll be the Day'.
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