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train to Waterloo from Windsor, and a day at the Festival of Britain. Although we did not meet then, and unknown to me, my wife Marion was on the train with the girls from Windsor Girls’ School, but of course boys and girls were segregated. Our only contact was by waving our trousers out of the carriage window!
    The Festival itself was a great experience, and the timing of it was right; just six years after the end of the war. It is a pity the Millennium Dome did not take off in the same way, but sadly people’s expectancy today is a lot more than fifty years ago, and only six years after war, that had deprived us of many of the pleasant things in life.
    In 1952, I was in the fifth form at school, and I remember one PT lesson in particular. We had just come out of the gym to change and our games master came into the changing room very stern faced and announced that the king was dead. There was a deathly silence and we were then sent home. I remember the day of George VI’s funeral in Windsor. Kings and queens are brought down from London on such occasions by train to the railway station in the centre of Windsor, which is kept open mainly for that purpose, and the processional route from there to the castle passes the Windsor Guildhall and Parish Church. As I mentioned earlier, I had an association with the Parish Church in Windsor, as I had been in the choir of its sister church All Saints’ since I was seven years old.
    On the day of the funeral, the Parish Church of St John the Baptist, had sold seats in the churchyard so that people could pay their respects as the cortege passed the church on its way from the railway station to the final resting place, and to enable the church to make “a bob or two” for the roof fund. I was on ‘duty’ at one of the gates, when a very colourful man approached me in his white robes and offered me a lot of money (wads of the old white £5 notes) to allow him in. The man was the well-known racing tipster Prince Monolulu. I called over to a church warden who was in charge and a deal was done; a few of those big fivers changed hands, and the ‘Prince’ took his place in the churchyard.
    It was the same year that Eton AC added Windsor to its name, and became Windsor and Eton AC.
    My final race at school was the one mile in the Annual School Sports. The record had stood for a little while at around 5 minutes 10 seconds, but I wanted to set a record that would stand for a while after I had disappeared from the scene. On the rough grass track that the goats used to trim, I ran the four laps in just 4 minutes 37 seconds. (For those who only understand metric distances and times, this would have been about 4:17 for 1,500 metres.) The record did stand for some years after that; in fact it may have carried through to the switch to metric distances. I did return to the School Sports a couple of times after this to run in the Old Boys v School relay.
    Shortly after this, came the time to leave school. Sport had been my school life and academic achievement suffered. I took a total of nine subjects for my ‘O’ levels and achieved just one; in Maths; although I could claim some near misses!
    We had some fun in that last year at school. I remember trousers of prefects, and on one occasion, a member of the staff’s being flown from the white flagpole.
    The headmaster had a 1934 green and black Austin 8 with running boards, and I remember we pushed it out into the middle of the school field and put a potato up the exhaust. Little did I know then that in 1960 I was to buy and own that treasured possession which I bought for just £5. I learnt to drive on it and then sold it to a scrap merchant for the same money. If only I had kept that splendid old car which was still in perfect working order.
    We were not a well-behaved year and were always in trouble for something, but it was all good natured and very rarely did the head have to use his cane.
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