Dukeshouse Wood Camp School (Part Two)

A Memory of Hexham.

My recollection of  a dance that was arranged in the sports hall made me and another lad George Bishop decide to abstain from the proceedings as I think at the time, in fact I am sure about myself that I was very self concious about contact with the opposite sex in those days. We  both decided to hide away in the toilets until after the event. However there was an informer in our midst and we were both summoned on stage in front of the entire camp at the dance hall. Mister Tait the camp headmaster who I wish now that I could meet up with but he has been gone for many years. Mr. Tait the Gateshead Labour party official decided that the punishment was to humiliate us by laying in with his leather strap. He didn't want to know any mitigating circumstances. So much for the compassionate Labour party to which in later years I was invited to join but rejected the notion for several other reasons which cropped up in the 1950's of a political nature. Another incident was when I recall a teacher prowling around the toilets late at night with a cane. I only recall this teacher had a moustache. (Hitler was dead by then so it couldn't have been him) He was inspecting the toilets to see if anyone had urinated on the floor. He caught one lad naked near his bed (Robert Brown) and cracked him on his back side accusing him of and I quote " I will tell you in your own language stop pi-----ng on the floor or I will crack you with this cane again if I catch you" Of course this was a rare occurrence as none of the other members of staff came around at that time of night. I recall waking up one night and found myself turned around and facing the bottom of my sleeping bag which I wasn't used to. I woke up and didn't know where I was and shouted for help to no avail. Obviously the lads that were awakened by my pleas thought I was talking in my sleep. I had to bite  a hole in the sleeping bag to get some air and managed to turn around and very relieved that no one mentioned this next morning. These were minor exceptions and were far outweighed by the brilliant times we had at the camp. The first time I experienced hot running water as we in Leopold street in Gateshead had cold running taps but there were people further down the street that had to go into the yard for water while we were lucky to have a sink indoors. Well that's about it I may come back with another story later. By the way another lad who turned out to be an excellent goalkeeper was my old schoolmate John Inglis. John who played for  Alexandra  road school  and later played for Durham city. I shadowed for him at school playing twice in goal against Shipcote school we won 2-1 and against the brilliant St. Wilfred's team who beat us all ends up 5-0 with the prolific goalscorer Jimmy Conroy getting a brace. Robert Parmley was another excellent player for the school who played at the camp for the town. He was playing next to me in the forward line when we played Central school on St. Hilda's pitch on Lobley Hill road in the 1947/48 season. We were beaten  3-1 with yours truly scoring the only goal converting a Hollyman centre which came off the crossbar.