Tower and Town, April 2018

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Memories Of A Misspent Youth - Part 3

It was quite a long walk from the Mead to schoo at St Peter's but it was relieved a little by calling to Mrs O'Keefe's sweet shop in the Parade where, before sweet rationing ended, we might be able to spend our threepences on off-the-ration cough sweets. Oh with what joy and gluttony we celebrated the end of sweet rationing! School lunches were eaten in the Welseyan Hall and each day the boys of St Peter's would walk in a noisy crocodile through the High Street to the hall where lunch had been delivered in hay boxes. The lunches were surprisingly good and I was particularly fond of the stews and individual fruit pies with custard.

Marlborough, set near Salisbury Plain and surrounded by military camps at Tidworth, Ogbourne and Chiseldon in the 50s, often saw military activity. Postern Hill was sometimes the site of exercises and we often saw long convoys of military vehicles including, on some thrilling occasions, at least to us boys, tanks. I particularly remember during the Suez crisis a convoy of desert-painted vehicles labouring up Herd Street as I was delivering the morning newspapers for Mr Lewis, the manager at WH Smiths. My round began at the bottom of Kingsbury Street, continued to the top then down Herd Street to the Green. On very cold mornings Ann Rushen's mum would be waiting in Herd Street with cocoa for her shivering paper boy. They don't make them like that any more!

I'm ashamed to say that I wasn't a fan of Marlborough Grammar School. I was a good deal less interested in what it had to teach me than in my other activities which revolved around the local platoon of the Army Cadet Force, Devizes Rifle Club, The Marlborough Small Bore Rifle Club run by the splendidly-names Major Heygate-Goddard in the College rifle range, tennis, my paper round, my weekend and summer job at Mr Gale's bee farm, beating for game on local shoots and Swindon Town Football Club. Unsurprisingly, I left MGS at 16 with one 'O' Level in English Language.

Living in 'The Mead' had its downsides for me. On the corner of London Road and Stonebridge Lane lived the headmaster of MGS, A R Stedman and his family. During the summer holiday when I was 15 he waylaid? me and suggested that I might enjoly helping to remove the turf from the site of the pavilion he hoped to have built in the sports ground in Elcot Lane - an offer I could hardly refuse. So much of that holiday was spent either working fin the bee farm or labouring unpaid on Mr Steadman's building site.

James Milsom