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afternoon.
    The interview, if such it can be termed, was conducted by Messrs Crosby and Dawson, two of the most genial men I’ve ever met in my life. This fact alone should have given me pause for thought, considering that they were inspectors of education. The blunt truth was that I simply didn’t realize how thin on the ground teachers were at that time, particularly in the industrial North.
    From their first firm handshake to their exclamations of ecstasy on examining the letter from London University confirming my new status, they were entirely on my side. In fact for most of the time they discussed me solemnly as if I was not there, extolling my scholarship and other virtues to a degree that would have proved embarrassing had it not been so ridiculously extravagant.
    In the end, after much apparent perusal of various files, they announced that they would be happy to offer me a temporary appointment as an assistant master for a probationary period, at a salary of thirty-three pounds, ten shillings and twopence per calendar month. Which seemed reasonable enough.
    I filled in the necessary form and signed it. Mr Crosby pulled it away from me with what I can only describe as indecent haste. His smile, as he cast his eye over it, seemed just a trifle more formal than before.
    ‘And when would my duties commence?’ I enquired.
    ‘Next Monday, I think.’ He took the card that Dawson passed him from a box file. ‘We have an excellent post for you here. Most suitable. Couldn’t be better. You are familiar with the Bagley area of the city?’
    I was indeed. One of the roughest slums on the wrong side of the river. I nodded, my heart sinking a little, and he passed the card across. ‘The address is on there. Mr Carter’s the man to see. One of our most able headmasters. If you’ve time, I suggest you pop along and see him at close of school today.’
    I examined the card slowly. ‘Khyber Street Secondary Modern School.’
    He smiled blandly, ‘I’m sure you’ll have a great deal to offer to older boys, Mr Shaw, a man of your experience.’ The full horror of it didn’t hit me until I saw the school, although the district itself was bad enough, with its cobbled streets and wretched little back-to-back terraces, the lavatories grouped together in small yards halfway along every street, each one serving four houses.
    The school was a grim, forbidding building in brick and stone, well-blackened by the years, and gave a rather curious impression of height, mainly, I think, because the best use had had to be made of a rather small site. It certainly towered above the roofs of the surrounding houses, and reminded me of some Dickensian workhouse more than anything else, which was hardly surprising. Originally it had been what was known in the trade as a board school, a product of that sudden late-Victorian interest in educating the workers.
    Beyond the fringe of green-painted iron railings there was a small asphalt playground, with toilets in one corner. There were two entrances at each end of the main building, the sexes being strictly segregated.
    I pushed open the door marked Boys and found myself in a dark hall at the bottom of a flight of stairs. There was a vaguely unpleasant smell, possibly from the dustbins ranged against the wall beside a door.
    I hesitated. The door opened and a man in a brown overall appeared and emptied a shovelful of wood shavings into one of the bins. He looked at me enquiringly, a small, wiry fox terrier of a man, with iron-grey hair that fell untidily across his eyes. Beyond his shoulder, I could see a sullen-looking youth in shirt-sleeves planing a plank of wood at a bench.
    I asked him for the headmaster’s office and he directed me in a dry West Riding voice. I thanked him, and as I turned away he flicked the shoulder flash on my battledress sleeve. ‘Intelligence, eh? By gum, lad, but we could do with some of that around here.’
    He went back into the woodwork room and I went up the