Within walking distance of my home was a large factory complex where they were always looking for unskilled workers. On the day I went out looking a pie factory wanted a process line worker, a cardboard box factory needed a trainee storeman, and a concern that made trailers for road transports needed a crane jockey. The foul smells in the bowels of the pie factory, combined with the oppressive heat, churned my stomach. When I revived I went to the box factory, but when I saw the height to which the boxes were stacked I trembled and fled. Thus I became a crane jockey.

 

Then he laughed and talked of other matters, of Shropshire, of schools and school life in general, of the news in that day’s papers. “You’re growing up into—umph—a very cross sort of world, Linford. Maybe it will have got over some of its—umph—crossness—by the time you’re ready for it. Let’s hope so—umph—at any rate… Well..” And with a glance at the clock he delivered himself of his old familiar formula. “I’m—umph—sorry—you can’t stay…”
At the front door he shook hands.
“Good-bye, my boy.”
And the answer came, in a shrill treble: “Good-bye. Mr. Chips…”
    James Hilton wrote Goodbye Mr Chips in 1934, a sloppy romantic lot of tosh about the way school never was, at least not in my experience, or else things had changed rather more dramatically than I thought. But you do suspect it describes the distorted way that old schoolteachers wish to remember their careers. Best of all, read it with a presumed closet paedophilia slant. It makes a whole new book out of it.

 

Closer to the truth of my late but hardly lamented schooldays, I suspect, are the outrageous and very funny St Trinians books by Timothy Shy with wonderful illustrations by Ronald Searle. Of course, here the holy terrors are girls (the feminine of bodgie is widgie) but that hardly makes any difference. The equally funny movies featured the excellent Alistair Sim (as the headmistress) and George Cole—Arfa Daley as a young Arfa Daley.