Formative Years at Mayflower

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Jonathan Doyle today

LM McCanna-Doyle 2022_5852

I was at Mayflower 1972-1979 like Mike Smith. In fact, there were two Mike Smiths in my year and I was friends with them both. One was something of a maths guru and always studied hard and the other somehow managed to to be the first person any of us knew to acquire a Ford Capri (probably in the years following school). A few of us used to meet most weekends in out sixth form years in The Chequers in the High St. In fact, we learned to drink beer and (more or less) talk to girls in that pub, under the accommodating blind eye (we started drinking well under age) of its owner, the generally good humoured publican Alf.

I remember the teachers Mike mentioned. Garood caned me once when I was in the lower school. I deserved it and it did make me behave more or less. It wasn’t a big deal being caned back then. A badge of honour in some ways.

I too was taught maths for a year by Mrs Broom. She was formidable but, well, she got the job done I guess. Maths was taught pretty well the further up the school we went. I had R L Smith for a summer school laid on to convert second set students at the end of SMP maths O level to the traditional maths we’d need in the sixth form for those of us taking pure or applied maths at A level. The top set, who took maths O level a year early, had got a year ahead and so second set pupils like me needed some catch up help over the summer. It was strange being one of maybe eight or ten pupils in an otherwise empty school for a few weeks. But, R L Smith brought us up to speed. There was another maths teacher, M A Smith, too I think, but I don’t remember much about him.

I shorted part of the school out once. A stupid curiosity that could quite easily been the end – some pupils had noticed that the door was open on an electricity box near the swimming pool. Some of them were daring each other to hold one of the cables coming up into it from the ground. The black one, which made your arm feel funny. For some bizarre reason, I agreed to touch the black and red cables together to see what happened. I understood enough that I knew I needed to insulated myself and so held a piece of scrap wire I’d found near the box in a bit of rag or cardboard and touched the two wires together. The was a flash and a loud bang. Everyone near the box ran off but the flash had momentarily blinded me so escaping was tricky. The lights in the swimming pool building went out. My eyes streamed for the rest of the afternoon and I remember sitting in a class and telling my teacher (and my mum when I got home) that I think I had a cold. No one seemed to get caught for it and my teachers and my mum all seemed to believe me about the cold. A lucky escape perhaps …

Three of my teachers deserve a special mention: Ms (Pat) Townsend, head of English, who I now realise was a very progressive teacher who taught so many students to appreciate and love literature; Mr Woollard, from the art department, who taught a Friday night photography class and left me with a lifelong appreciation of Nikons; and Mr (Dean) Casperson, an MIT graduate from the US, who taught me physics and, very usefully, how to learn to see complex problems as no more than a series of simpler ones, each just needing to be broken down into something more understandable. I didn’t pay enough attention to any of them at the time of course. But some of what they wanted us to know nevertheless seemed to sink in and last a lifetime and be useful. I’m much more grateful now for their determined efforts than I remember being at the time.

There was a fair amount of bullying I remember. Two boys (both former good friends) systematically bullied me when I was 14-16 and then, inexplicably, they stopped and we became good enough friends again. Ghastly at the time but in a way it helped me in later life deal with such people faster and more effectively than I’d managed at school. So, all part of a 1970s education I guess.