Memories: Lyndon Mallinson
When I was nine, my parents moved from Pye Nest to Southowram; so I had to change junior schools, Copley to Southowram Withinfields. To my amazement, and that of teachers and definitely my parents, I passed my 11+ with a high percentage, enabling me to go to my first choice of Heath Grammar School.
First day, I was amazed to see three former friends in my same year from Copley J & I School, Paul Hall, (?) Garside and Andrew McParland. This helped me greatly with the daunting prospect of starting BIG school. Day 1 was a real adventure, being instructed from every teacher on how to back a book using wallpaper (the white side) or brown paper to preserve it for posterity. We even had a games lesson on the first day across the road opposite the school, no doubt for Mr Capelin to see who showed any potential to play rugby, be an athlete or possessed any other physical potential. Making our way back across the road to change, one pupil ran out into the road and was hit by a car, luckily unscathed but severely ridiculed.
I was never academic but having an excellent, semi photographic, memory I found lessons very boring indeed. This led to me becoming a bit of a lad who was always in trouble for disrupting class. I remember my parents once receiving a letter from Mr Bunch advising that, ‘Due to a backlog of detentions, Lyndon will be attending dentation for the rest of this week and also the following week.’ Somehow, I managed to drift through the years avoiding suspension or expulsion, maybe down to the fact that my parents were fundraisers for the school and my mother, who worked in the Halifax Library, donated dozens of boxes of books to the Heath library.
I look back at my days at school with fondness and, although being a drifter, I have become somewhat successful after spending the past 26 years in the IT industry. Living in Australia since 1988, I enjoy regularly reading what is happening on the Heath Old Boys website. A few years ago, I dug out a couple of old year books and scanned them and you can find them on the HOBA website, along with a PDF of some of D.R.A. Morton’s cartoons. Here are some of my memories of teachers:
- Mr Geoff Kay Loved his rugby and, by the size of him, also his food.
- Mr (Chogley) Hogley Formerly lived in Kenya and, when in a rare state of joviality, regaled us with colonial tales and talking randomly in Swahili!
- Mr (Moggy) Morton ‘Gentlemen, stop pi ... around,’ and, when working with clay, ‘You have to manipulate it to get the required results,’ and ‘Please gentlemen, no phallic symbols.’
- Mr Newton When windy, would be seen in the playground always trying to restore his ‘comb over’ back in place.
- Mr Blamires I remembered him also being a music teacher at Copley J & I and, when he was at Heath, he once tapped me up for a cigarette.
- Mr Capelin Famously broke his leg on the Krypton Factor obstacle course. Once had a boxing match with a gobby 5th former. Loved his golf and also introduced me to the sport with lessons on the rugby pitch in his lunchtimes, even giving me my first club, a nice 3 wood that I still own.
- Mr Bristow ‘Come on in, settle down, stop messing around.’ What was really under that beard? On sunny days, drove to work in his MG Midget.
- Rasputin Once escorted by him out of class to the headmaster’s office; he told me to stand under the clock whence I told him ‘F ... off.’ The result was the cane, well deserved but well worth it at the time.
- Mr John Bunch Genuinely one of the nicest people I have had the pleasure of knowing. He was firm but fair and very patient.
Lyndon Mallinson [Heath 81–86]