Worcester Technical High School 1958 61

A Memory of Worcester.

I remember starting in the September when the first girls (4) joined the school ,Margaret and Pat being two of them. Here I learned how to technically draw a nut and bolt in 3D that looked like a photo and a section of a gearbox good enough for an engineer to use.
Taffy Elkins a little Welshman ,I think ,who was the headmaster at the time , mathematically proved to us that 1+ 1 could equal 3 . I had large respect for him .
I remember Monday afternoons were a bike ride up to Bilford Road for football, cricket and athletics just behind the Air Traing Corps huts and the Spitfire plane parked in front. Les Cole (teacher) bore terrible burn injuries to his face and hands from when he was a fighter pilot shot down in WW2 . He,was such a brilliant and kind man that my knowledge of science supported my career years later.
The old school in Hounds Lane was used on Wednesday 's and ,near Lady Huntingdons church off the Deansway was a prefabricated classroom where we did metal work . It later was where you went to tax a car . In those days a bike was essential for getting around the city.
Geoff Billingham allowed us to do a cross country run on Tuesday mornings up around the canal and past Samual " Sammys" Southall school and back via Sampson Walk to ice cold showers that shrivelled up everything important to a teenager. He and two other teachers arranged a trip to the Rome Olympic Games in the summer of 1960. We travelled in a "Black & White " coach overland to a beach a few km outside Rome. There we set up camp in some borrowed kaki scout tents for ten days from where we went to venues including the colloseum to watch the games. I still have the programmes. One of the boy's contracted diphtheria and had to stay in Italy for several weeks after our return to the uk.
When the time came to leave school with our GCE's a tradition was to go onto the Severn bridge and throw our caps into the water below. Mine hit the water just behind a moored pleasure steamer and up popped a stunned fish. I remember the best part of the uniform was a long wide scarf of blue ,and yellow stripes on a black background , fabulous.
Sadly , during the next couple of years , three of my school friends died each in separate road accidents.
I went on to the new college in Deansway. I was among the first intake to the new building.