大象传媒

The war was progressing without too much good news, we kids compared our maps each day with every war front pencilled in, we probably had more idea of what was going on than the generals. Suddenly the school routine turned on its head.
They decided to take some of the pupils and go from pure academic subjects to Technical subjects and so we were sorted.
I managed to go into the technical side as academia and I were on different tracks. My art Teacher Sandy Dobing a first world war soldier told me that as an artist I would get plenty of employment white washing outside toilets and black leading stoves. His pictures were hung around the classroom and showed the horrors of trench warfare so he seemed to know what he was talking about.
My French Teacher said I was making good progress for the village idiot but My English and History Teachers both thought the sun shone out of my trousers, you cannot please all of the people can you.
New Routine.
The two technical classes were quite small and we went straight into Maths of every kind technical drawing for which I found I had a penchant and still keeping most of the other periods dropping languages. Reg. Plummer was the Technical drawing teacher and had a habit of firing off board rubbers in all directions at a whim. One whistled by my head parting my hair and mothers Irish temper flared in me, the board rubber was returned with the full force of my bowling arm that had got me a hat trick the weekend before. It hit the board and bounced back into his chest leaving him open mouthed with shock, he usually issued his own forms of punishment but this time it was the headmasters study a place I knew well.
There after no more rubbers flew and he took an interest in my drawing. He would bring in all kinds of things for me to strip measure and draw, front Side and Top elevations meticulously set down with all measurements exact. My maths had always been good so trigonometry geometry and calculus held no mysteries.
Practical, beside the woodwork was in Chemistry and engineering so started the happiest years of my school life.
We were having raids nearly every night as the Germans flew over us to the big city's inland anything spare they dropped on us on the way out. I slept very well in the comfort of the shelter, a home built Hilton of a shelter not your pip squeak Anderson. We had electric light and tea making gear as well as mums spare food store in kilner jars and biscuit tins. Even the 4.7s over the back hardly disturbed my sleep,us healthy active boys needed our sleep Germans or no.
Awakening.
I had become involved with out of school activity's and that included dances in small church or chapel halls around town. Mum and Dad had been prize dancers before the war, that meant they danced in competions for money or goods and they won plenty of those. I had gone to those dances because the girl who looked after my sister refused to look after me saying I was a little devil or words to that effect. At the dances sitting watching the swirling dancers the lights and the music it lit a spark that lasted for many years.
There was always some lady who would get me up as I was tall for my age and I knew every dance by the time I was old enough to go to the village hall dances.
Being able to dance was the inside track as far as the girls were concerned, I never sat down as the records of Victor Sylvester played to the straight beat. One night a young fill in teacher arrived at the hall to help with the refreshments. Later she came over and asked me to dance, I will say here that innocent as we were every boy in the school lusted after her. Even I with my very large ego was overawed by this event and when she asked if I would dance with her again the answer was yeees mmissss, I was quite out of this world. She did have this funny smell a mixture of mothballs and cigarettes both a little off putting to me but then who said heaven was perfect.
My rating at school had shot up to an incredeble height next day, the stories grew by the minute until a sixth former asked me if I had actually been kissing Miss Harding outside the hall. Being a gentleman of the first water I could not answer that question as I never told on a lady but I was thinking "I wish". I learned that silence or not telling was a bigger draw than blabbing your mouth off with the wild tales boys told in the school yard.
The next dance the hall was full, half the school arrived to see this phenomena for themselves. There was a quickening of interest as Miss Harding came in the room looking very peachy indeed. The refreshments served she arrived at my side and said are you going to ask me to dance in the full hearing of some of the boys, I think she had heard the rumours going around and rubbed it up a bit. We danced several dances and she still smelled of mothballs and smoke but who cared what the angels smelt like.
No one else danced with her mainly because most could not dance but at the dancing class I went to once a week the numbers suddenly shot up mainly from our school. I became one of the big boys gang pals and was on equal terms because I had done something none of them had done it was a wonderful feeling but I still kept my mouth shut, until now that is.
This went on for several months and the rumours grew apace, I walked the schoolyard like James Bond with the plebes kowtowing oh the feeling of power. Suddenly she had gone, another teacher took her place and I would have needed two dance halls to get her around, she was a big girl, not that I would have told her as she had a good left, when we got over exuberant she used it to good effect. Many years later on leave from the army, this lady walked up to me with an man on her arm and said this is the young man who danced with me when I was feeling lonely while you were away. Mrs Harding it had been but then all teachers were miss, I was taken aback not ever thinking of her being lonely but that was what wartime was like, we shook hands and that was it.
So my school nick name became dancer not in a derogatory way but the story of me and the teacher followed me through the school until I left just before Christmas 1944. We had gone from never having any good news to every day it was more success.
The end of an era.
The school rejoiced as the headmaster read the banner headline in the Express The Allies land on the Continent, each day he gave a progress report as we went through France Belgium and Holland. Thus it was I left to take up an apprenticeship in engineering for the last months of the war and then on into the real hard times.
I tell this story so young people can see we did lead a normal kind of life in abnormal times. Six years is a very long time to wear a miserable face there was fun and laughter, sometimes of the manic kind but we had to keep our spirits up or so the government posters told us.
Frank Mee.

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