I arrived on my first day at Enfield Technical School - Enfield Tech as it was usually known - not really knowing what to expect. I was aware that I had not been doing too well at Latymer, and was rather surprised to be placed in the top class for first years, 3A. However, I discovered that most of the other pupils had not passed their eleven plus's and had come from Secondary Modern schools, so I was not competing at the same level as at the grammar school. Being at the top of the class, I found lessons easy to follow as they were taken at a pace to suit other boys lower down, and I had more time to think about and absorb what was being taught. It is easier to stay at the top of a group than to have to struggle to keep up with the rest, and I'm sure that this was the reason I did well at this school. I should add that the slower pace did work for other pupils, as demonstrated by the healthy number of GCE passes that the school achieved each year.
The buildings at the school - later renamed after Ambrose Fleming - were shared with Enfield Technical College, but we pupils - all boys - could be recognised by the green uniform jackets we wore, which resulted in us being called Green Ants by the college students. Although the main dining hall was used each morning for school assemblies, it and all other facilities such as the library, gymnasium, wood and metal workshops, were shared by both the daily influxes. A playing field was mainly used by the school for football in sports periods, and before the first of these for my class, we had to elect someone to act as captain. I worked out that if I voted for any of the other contenders, that one would be elected, whereas if I voted for Bernard Ingram, who was was bespectacled, slightly tubby, and obviously no sportsman, I stood a good chance of being elected myself, and that is what happened. However, as soon as everyone saw how useless I was at football, I was quickly deposed and a more skilful player elected in my place.
Naturally, the subject I enjoyed most was Mathematics, taught by a large dark-haired chap with a limp - a Yorkshire man who also dealt with hymn singing at assemblies. With his strong northern accent he always pronounced the name of this activity as sing-G-ing, and he also ran a classical music appreciation group at lunchtimes. The aspect of maths that appealed to me most was the fact that answers to problems were always either right or wrong - there could be no alternatives. Geometry was not quite so clear-cut, so I was not so good at this than I was with purely numerical questions. The lack of absolute information also applied to subjects like history and geography, so I did not do so well with these. Applied Maths, with the bald teacher Bombhead - I cannot recall his actual name - was a different matter, and had some very interesting aspects that I enjoyed. I really liked Physics, but did not do so well with Chemistry - something I regretted in later years when I became very interested in the subject. The only memory I retain of Mr Ferron's lessons was of when he pushed John East's nose too far into a bell jar to sample chlorine gas, and the lad collapsed. As usual for East he had been mucking about and interrupting the lesson, so it was he who was called up to do the test by the irritated teacher, who went a bit too far in introducing East's nose to the gas. Panic ensued for a while, until the prostrate East recovered, and he received profuse apologies from Mr Ferron who was extremely shaken by the incident. During the following playtime, East revealed that he had been wise to what was about to happen, so never inhaled the chlorine at all. His collapse was a sham, a typical antic of a boy who was always a rascal. Another boy of that ilk was Elson, who once managed to steal some sodium pellets from the stores in woodwork shop. When he heard on the grapevine that the theft had been noticed, he tried to dispose of the evidence down one of the school toilets. Unfortunately, sodium floats in water, with which it has a very strong affinity, and a huge reaction took place, which destroyed the toilet bowl and caused the area to flood. Elson was very devious, and I do not recall him ever being identified as the culprit.
I think it was East however who put Mr Petch, who took us for Religious Instruction, on the spot when we had been reading extracts from the Bible about Jesus's birth. He declared that he did not understand the reference to Mary being a virgin, and asked for an explanation of why and how this affected the creation of a baby. Poor Mr Petch tried to give a very general answer, but East asked for more details, rendering the red-faced teacher totally at a loss to find a response. He was only able to escape from the situation when he was rescued by the end of period bell sounding. Mr Petch also took History, which, possibly because it was being taught at a Technical school, was for my three years there, was devoted to little else than the British Factories Acts. I cannot think of anything more boring to hear about, one act after another, and I certainly absorbed practically none of it. As well as Chemistry and RI, we also had bad behaviour in Art, where we should have learned about perspective drawing and colour wheels. Unfortunately, the Art teacher - who was getting on a bit - did not have a great deal of control of a bunch of hyper-active boys, and I think we lost the opportunity to learn a lot from a very gifted man as the lessons degenerated into near riots on many occasions. Although I was fascinated by perspective, with its vanishing and measuring points, I was possibly often the only pupil paying attention. It saddens me that I cannot remember the teacher's name - but then there are lots of things I can't remember now!
Besides Art, we had lessons in Technical Drawing, the first session being devoted to instructing us pupils on the way to sharpen a 3H pencil to a chisel point, and how to keep it in perfect condition. I realised that I was not very good at this, probably because I was rather impatient to be getting on with the actual drawing, so sought a solution at the local stationers. This came in the form of a Staedler flat lead mechanical pencil, where the lead size could be chosen to be exactly the width of the desired chisel point. I invested a lot of my pocket money in purchasing one of these pencils and thereafter was always able to spend more time actually working on my drawing tasks rather than having to devote time to fiddling with penknife, razor blade and sandpaper on a wooden pencil. I was therefore always well in front of my fellows in completing assignments, and usually got top marks. Also during that first lesson we were asked to bring money the following week to pay for a set of drawing instruments. These came in flat black cases, but I found that the lid of mine would not shut tightly when its retaining pin was pushed in from the side, so the instruments shifted out of their recesses if the case was moved. I thought that the holed tag in the lid that the side pin entered to hold the lid shut was screwed in, so tried twisting it with pliers to screw it in a little further. Ping! it went as the thin metal snapped off - it was not screwed, just simply pushed in. I still have the case, but a collection of elastic bands has been needed over the intervening years to keep its lid closed!
Some of our English lessons would be devoted to reading out loud in turn from a book, the first of which was a biography of James Naysmith, a Scottish engineer, philosopher, artist and inventor, famous for his development of the steam hammer. Even in those early days of steam, his machine was so controllable that he could pound ten-ton red-hot metal forgings, or crack an egg in a wineglass without damaging the glass. Again, my impatience to get on with the story whilst other boys stumbled over their readings meant that I was always secretly many pages ahead of the others. I would keep an ear cocked for the sound of them turning a page, and do the same back in the book where I had inserted a finger to mark their place. When my turn to read came, I would frantically try to recall the last words of the boy who had just spoken, and try to find them when I reopened the book where my finger resided. I could then find the right point from where to continue and not get in trouble with the teacher, Mr Pink. I did not like the lessons devoted to Sentence Analysis very much, as I could not see much point in breaking a sample down into its Subjects, Predicates, Nouns, and Verbs, etc. To me, a good sentence had to make sense, and read or sound right. Identifying its components did not seem to be much help with that. Perhaps reading all those text comics as a youngster had instilled sufficient sense of what was needed to make a good sentence rather than a bad one. Anyway, I did do well in English, winning two book voucher prizes one year. With them, I obtained The Complete Home Entertainer, and The Cruel Sea - later made into a film starring Jack Hawkins and Dirk Bogarde - which were presented to me at the annual Speech Day
The English teacher, Mr Pink, tested potential candidates for the opportunity to recite a poem at Speech Day, and that year I gave him an excellent reading of a passage from The Merchant of Venice, and was picked for the chance to perform. The only problem was that the chosen verses had to be memorized, and I rather rashly picked Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky as my selection. On the evening, standing on the stage in front of a packed hall, I started well, delivering the first two lines clearly and with good style, but then dried up! The lady judge, who had a copy of the poem for reference, kindly prompted me with the start of the next line, which I then remembered and with slightly less confidence delivered OK - but I dried once more. Unfortunately, this happened again and again, as my memory failed me repeatedly, until it seemed that the judge ran out of patience and stopped giving me prompts. In an extreme silence I stood there totally at a loss as to what to do, until she called up to me, You've finished!, and I was able to escape.
I enjoyed making a poker in Metalwork, by twisting a square metal bar made red-hot in a forge, then coiling its end to make a handle after it had been heated again. I should have used a smaller cross section bar, as the one I made was really too big and cumbersome for home use. When we saw Ingram working on parts of a model steam engine he was building at home, he naturally was nicknamed Naysmith thereafter. In Woodwork we all made seagrass stools, with mortise-and-tenon joints. I cheated a little on mine, by cramping the rails so fiercely into the legs that they sunk into the uprights enough to hide the inaccuracies of the tenons. I also turned a rather nice bowl on a lathe, and also bishop and rook chess pieces. I always intended to make the rest of a set, but despite owning two lathes in later years, never got round to doing so.
My school report at the age of thirteen contained pretty good comments on my performance and behavior, and also noted my height and weight - which was seven stone two pounds. My mathematical brain immediately calculated that this was exactly one hundred pounds, and that somehow rather pleased me, especially when I noticed that the average weight for pupils in my class was the same as mine. After reading that report I always thought of myself as somehow being an average person. I was reasonably popular with my classmates, but as I lived nearby, unlike most in my class I did not travel home on buses with others who naturally became better acquainted during their journeys, so was always a little on the fringe. I did pal up with Roger Jones, with whom I usually shared a double desk, and would sometimes travel over to where he lived in Palmers Green, to go to ballroom dance schools with him. The aim of these evening forays was to try to get acquainted with girls as well as to learn the waltz and quickstep, but although we achieved some success with the latter, we usually scored nil with the former.
On the first day of my last year, I was called into the headmaster's study by Mr Anthony, to hear him say, Johnson, I really can't decide whether or not to make you a prefect. In view of the fact that I had been summoned to his study many times in the preceding years because I was in trouble, I could understand his dilemma. My good academic record and my assurances that he could depend on me to behave better, eventually persuaded him to award me the coveted badge, but I think he really had misgivings. I did not let him down - apart from one incident involving the Bible readings made each morning in Assembly. I had been given the job of coaching the fourth form boy chosen to do the reading for the following day, during the preceding afternoon's playtime. Instead of listening to him practice the passage, I would simply give the boy a note of the Chapter and Verses he was to read, and hand him the Bible. On the occasion in question the reading was from Genesis, and concerned the snake in the Garden of Eden. When the boy read the passage to the pupils and masters assembled in the hall, he pronounced the word subtile as sub-tile rather than suttle - not once, but several times. When interviewed - back in the headmaster's study - I pleaded that this was an isolated incident and that I did coach the boys normally, but had missed doing so this time for some reason. I got away with just a warning, but did do the job properly from then on.
Towards the end of the last of my three years at the school, I had an interview with Bombhead, who acted as Careers Master. When asked what my ambitions were, I replied that I wanted to be an electrical engineer. He suggested two possible employers, The Post Office Laboratories and Ediswans, both of whom were taking on apprentices for what was referred to as Sandwich Courses. These involved taking a five year Higher National Diploma course in electronics at Enfield Technical College, where half of each year would be spent at the college and the remainder in various departments of the employing company. I visited both companies to look them over, but my choice was fairly easy to make as the Post Office Lab was located at Dollis Hill, two long bus journeys away, whereas Ediswans was a two minute bike ride from my home. For the GCE O Level examinations at the end of that last year, I was entered for seven subjects - History, Maths, Applied Maths, Physics, Handicrafts-Woodwork and Handicrafts-Metalwork. I knew I had no chance with History, but was quite pleasantly surprised to get passes in the other six. They were mainly C grade - Average ? - and were good enough to enable me to qualify for the HND course for which I had been proposed, so I left school at the end of term ready to start my career with Ediswans.