Reminiscence
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REMINISCENCES
These begin at the old Harris in Park Place, which I entered at the age of five, travelling daily by tram to the West Port and thence through a warren of closes to the top of Park Place. I can still recall the smell of hot morning rolls from Durkie the baker's in one of these closes. The delights of the infant department with its sand trays and plasticene soon gave way to more serious matters‑doing sums on slates and practising copperplate writing with scratchy pens. These ceremonies were presided over by a series of formidable ladies, each of whom had regularly taken the same primary class year after year, so that one could predict the sequence of teachers with .a fair degree of certainty. The classes were held in what had once been a private house (a doctor's?) at the foot of Park Place, some of the rooms being in the semi‑basement. Amenities in the old school were rudimentary. Our playground became a mud‑patch in winter; and I remember being sent, covered in mud from a fall, to stand in front of the fire in the old basement kitchen until the mud caked hard enough to be brushed off. The move to the new building in Perth Road was a kind of liberation for us. The primary department was no longer separate but housed in the main building; we had a nice new classroom and big playgrounds with plenty of room for tig and 'hucky‑duck' or mock battles between Cavaliers and Roundheads. There was no nostalgia for the old surroundings, only a desire to get over the hurdle of the Qualifying Exam and into the Secondary Department where we would have a whole range of teachers. Of the secondary staff of those days, it is the `worthies' who spring to mind first‑wee Johnny Munro of the French Department whose temper was as fiery as the triple‑strength peppermints he sucked; Mr Steele, who though a fine classicist could not control a class and whose temper we tried sorely and often; his head of department, A.R. Simpson, who belted us sorely and often, not for misbehaviour but for each and every mistake made in a Latin lesson. He certainly taught by fear, but the belt was not, as far as I recall, greatly used by others, and then only for misconduct or idleness. Looking back, one realises how well staffed the Harris was at that time. People like Dr. Greig, David Carrie, David Latto, Miss Beveridge, Adam McClure, John Kerr, W.B. Thom, John Bain, Douglas McIntosh, Henry Bunting and Charlie Brough ‑ all of these were quite distinct in personality and teaching styles, yet each contributed richly to the life of the school. And the list is by no means an exhaustive one. What was surprising for those days was the amount of extra‑curricular activity. I can recall our class being taken on a whole series of industrial visits that would hardly be possible nowadays ‑ to a jute works, to the Caledon, to the gasworks, to Carolina Port power station and even to a pit in the Fife coalfield. Through the Cycling Club, the History Club and what must have been a Science Club combining forces, :we had Saturday trips which took us both to historic sites and to works and factories. Though the 'Lit' did not reach any literary heights, we learned something about speaking in public. In preparation for the Lit Dance, some of the staff did their best to teach us the elements of ball‑room dancing. At the practices the great problem was to get anyone to take the floor: the boys lined one side of the hall and the girls the other ‑ until Bill Thom with his renowned subtlety of approach grabbed a few boys by the scruff of the neck and paired them off, sometimes with more insight and observation than we gave him credit for. All in all, though pupil‑teacher relationships were more formal in those days, there was a good rapport and a lot of fun. Yet as we entered 5th Year, there was already a feeling of time running out. Our History syllabus, surprising as it may seem, took us right up to contemporary events; and we had traced the rise of the Axis powers from the invasion of Manchuria onwards. I can vividly recall the excited speculation when the news of the Munich crises came through, and I don't think we were displaying unusual political foresight in feeling that the settlement was only buying time. That feeling was strengthened for those of us who went on the school trip that was run to Italy in the summer of 1939. It gave us an unforgettable glimpse of Mussolini's Italy at what, I suppose, must have been its peak. At every railway station there seemed to be some military activity, either a parade of the uniformed Fascist Youth Movement, or of reservists called to the colours; and everywhere we went, the heavy‑jowled face of il Duce glowered down at us from posters. Though we weren't going to let this kind of nonsense spoil our holiday and prevent us from enjoying the sights of Rome and Naples, there was a feeling that we were perhaps just getting home in time. For the few who in those days stayed on to 6th Year, the session that began in August, 1939 was obviously not going to be an ordinary one; and it was only a week or two after the start of the session that the start of hostilities closed the schools. Somehow or other, the staff who were to be taking 6th Year arranged a scheme for holding classes either in their own houses or in those of colleagues who lived near the school. For us to be visiting teachers for lessons in their own homes was an unusual situation which took some getting used to, as it must have done for them too, but in many ways it was a marvellous experience. Seen in their domestic setting, the teachers became much more human, and our lessons acquired an extra dimension. Something of that changed relationship persisted even after school eventually restarted and the tutorials in teachers' homes came to an end. Looking back at those days, I cannot help feeling that the period between the opening of the new building in Perth Road and the outbreak of war must have been a particularly buoyant stage in the school's history. As pupils of that vintage we were perhaps luckier than we realised.
Ian D. Gilroy (1927‑40)
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