FEATHERED TEACHER

GATEWAY GIRLS GRAMMAR SCHOOL 1954-57

My first art class at this school horrified me. The teacher with her wild red hair, red lipstick, flamboyant movements and expressions, who was in the habit of wearing feathers in her many hats, was in charge of the Art Class - always meaning painting - in those days. She minced in with her wide coat swinging out and turned - it fell beside her and her feathers stopped shivering. Then she announced that she wanted us to paint little boys kicking a football on a playing field - horror of horrors - I had no idea what such a scene looked like - a slight Lowry-like image of my own passed my mind, a huge expanse of green, the green paint must have been quickly used up on that day! 

A subject so uninspiring I couldn't have thought up myself. Needless to say the paintings lacked any passion; she like a great turkey mother ruffled her feathers now and then doing her own thing - whatever that was - or wandering round and haughtily making strange remarks to the mixed gathering of children below her. The only time she inspired me was on All Saint's day and she gave us the picture, describing the saint's coming out of the graves in the dark graveyard - that was inspiring and even brought a grunt of approval from my Lady Ottoline-like old Dame (probably not that old), Miss Roberts.

Another Character was the Gym mistress - "yes miss" although her name was Mrs. Divine she was definitely not divine. She was employed out of sympathy on the part of the Head Mistress for her difficult situation in life, whatever that was, and when the girls were slow to understand what contortions they were supposed to carry out, she shouted at them saying "What kind of homes do you come from?" This sent me, usually passive, into a rage of silent indignation, not so much for myself as for my fellow class mates, many of whom came from what they call the back streets and were very poor - drunk dads - crumbling bones through lack of nourishing food (one girl was always breaking her limbs) so you can imagine my intense anger at this woman for being so utterly insensitive to her audience. 

At this same Grammar school, when the yearly Cricket Test Matches were on, we children were sat to do some work and on sneaking upstairs to see where they had disappeared to, we found the whole of the staff gathered in the Art classroom watching, oh no, listening! To the Wireless and its cricket commentaries. That was Grammar School education !!! 

In English class there was a sweet natured little lady(girl) who had an equally sweet natured voice which could even be over-ridden by a loud whisper. Free speech was not encouraged but divulged in and the amount of Geoffrey Chaucer that stayed in any of our brains was minimum.

I preferred the writer being studied in a parallel class, William Shakespeare and with a pal from their side (the artistic class - me having been put into the academic class to help strengthen me academically!) Kathryn Kynoch and another friend Veronica and I, during the break when we should have been out playing, took the volumes of Shakespeare that I had at home- one for each play, leather bound - and entering the showers we proclaimed sh! in loud and dramatic voices every single play, our voices in that sounding-box echoed throughout the whole school if one had ears for it. We were never discovered, and oh what fun we had "What ho" and all! 

Kathryn's father played the piano, she was good at painting and also at writing she was half Irish, half Scottish. When we went with my family out on the hilltops, she was wearing her thin woollen sweater open at the throat in howling winds and stood firm not freezing, while we had to wrap ourselves in scarves and sweaters. Thomas Hardy was her favourite author at the time, and still is I believe. She is now a painter of renown, and deserves to be, full of character and the rich colours of her palette glow with her passion for the art. (In Glasgow. Rosina!)