“On my first day at Paston, all the new scholars were placed into the
A-stream or B-stream, possibly related to the pass marks we’d gained
in the 11-plus examination. I began my first year in the A-stream, only
to be downgraded the following term. Eventually, in the IVth Form I
think it was, the categories changed to Arts and General – no prizes
given for where I ended up!”

My first Form Master was Mr (Charlie) Lamb who also took us for
History. He was a very quiet man and seemed to find it hard to gain
control of us even in the First Form.

“I always seemed to have problems with pronunciation of some names,
with Mesopotamia being one in particular. Charlie Lamb asked me to
read a passage from a History book but when it came to that certain
word I said: ‘Messy Pot Am I’, which the rest of IB found very amusing.
Unfortunately it entitled me to 500 lines of ‘I must pay more attention in
future’ – a phrase that was to follow me throughout the rest of my days
at the Paston School.”

As far as I can remember, the other Masters were: Mr Read (Woodwork),
Norman ‘Kiffy’ Cutting (Music), Harry Hawden with a magnificent
moustache (English), Mr Bickmore (Maths), Mr Shuffrey (Gos) who
taught French, Granny-Hill (Maths), Philip Havercroft (French), why did
we always call him ‘Doker’? Then there was Bob Bennett (Physics), Tom
Pearce (Chemistry), Dick ‘Watt’ Tyler (Chemistry) John Mattocks
(Biology), Mr ‘Voco’ Atkinson (Latin), good old Skerret-Rogers (English,
with a Norfolk accent!), Joe Mercer (Art), Mr Cooper (History and
Deputy Head) and finally, the most memorable of them all the PT Master
we all called ‘Maggie’ (though not to his face!), Mr Magdaleno!

“Our Latin Master, Mr Atkinson or ‘Voco’ (pronounced Wocco) as he
was known, would get us to learn Latin verbs by chanting them parrot
fashion off the large blackboard. It seems his favourite verb was ‘voco’,
to call. Voco, vocas, vocat, vocamis, vocatis, vocant; at least I seem to
recall that was the way it went – if not, please correct me!”

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