The abnormally prolonged wintry and wet conditions that greeted the start of Lent term, 1960, threatened to turn the five football pitches on the Maes-y-Llan into unplayable quagmires of mud and water, and to transform the normally mild tempered and genial  'Stoker' Lewis, pictured below posing nonchalantly and relaxed before camera on the quadrangle against a snowy background of town buildings and the distant tower of St Oswald's parish church, into a darkly brooding figure of aggravation, as each Wednesday and Saturday my brother Bernard and I helped him prepare, under considerable stress, the five footballs for the afternoon's matches.

Mr Geniality, putting on a realxed front.

I jest, of course, as Stoker's usual demeanour of a scowling, unsociable animal, ready to jump down on boys of all ages for the most trivial offence, was the norm rather than the exception in School House, and it was not apparent until much later that all his domineering bluster was a front to conceal a basically shy and quiet, gentle, man who was determined to establish firm control in class, come what may, having seen more liberal Masters come to grief in front of volatile, unruly boys.

I should first explain that back in the dark ages of the 1950s, preparations for a game of football at Oswestry School were somewhat complicated. A pig's bladder had to be inserted inside a heavy leather casing before inflation, and the ensuing process was fraught with disaster as there was always a possibility of puncturing the bladder with the bradawl, used in lacing up the leather ball.

The air in the school library, where this twice-weekly pre-match ritual of preparing footballs took place, was often rent with expletives to accompany the whoosh of air escaping from a football as Stoker frequently managed to puncture the pig's bladder during the final stages of the tricky lacing up process. This then necessitated a repair of the bladder and a repeat of the process all over again, which did nothing to alleviate his irritation at having embarrassingly botched up the procedure in the first place. At times during this process, apart from Stoker's frustrated heavy breathing, all that could be heard was noise of frenetic activity coming from the boot room next door as boys hammered nailed wooden studs into their football boots using a cobbler's last. This was thirsty work.

D Pickup taking a welcome liquid break in the School Library where all the pre-match action with the footballs took place.

Compared with today's much lighter, synthetic footballs, the absorbent heavy leather balls universally in use during the postwar era, were very much more difficult to control, and in wet conditions seemed almost to double in weight. Crossing a ball from the wing at the best of times could be problematic, and nigh impossible on a wet and muddy pitch, and many a mark was left on foreheads when heading the ball if the contact point was the laced up area. 

The heavy leather ball showing the lethal laces.
 

Typical of the cumbersome 'bovver' boots posing as football boots in my era.

Similarly, the carpet slipper type of football boot worn today is a far cry from yesteryear's Doc Martin style footwear which required the use of nailed wooden studs for maintaining grip. These had to be hammered into the underside of the boot and it is surprising that injuries suffered during aggressive tackles were as few as they were. 

I remember witnessing one broken leg which a boy named Michael Cliffe sustained during a feisty House Match against Burnaby later that term. It happened on the First Game pitch, just yards away from me, in a match being refereed by Stoker, and as I write this I can still hear the sound of the fracture in my ear. Several of us helped carry Michael over to the nearby hospital, and I remember thinking he barely made any fuss about it.

The hospital opposite the School entrance and adjacent to the Maes-y-Llan.

Needless to say, there were no such luxuries as heated or astroturf pitches at that time, and I think I am right in saying that Oswestry School first benefitted from a synthetic surface only as recently as 2013 after OO Andrew Legg (1950-1956) offered his professional consultancy services as a gift. What in the 1950s had been the steeply, sloping Second Game pitch, on which matches could quickly become a one-sided affair in wet and windy conditions, was levelled out, and fitted with an all-weather surface. Andrew, a contemporary of mine, oversaw the whole process from start to finish.

But, I digress. Having set the scene as I remember it, Lent term got underway with little prospect of much inter-school football, and in fact our Senior 1st XI did not play at all, leaving it to the Juniors to uphold the honour of the School by winning their one and only game of the term. My Diary reminds me that on 29 January as we sat down to decide the composition of our Senior team for the next day's match against Ellesmere College, torrential rain began to fall, causing the cancellation of a steeplechase practice planned for 4pm. The heavy rain also resulted in our Senior football match being called off, although the Junior game went ahead.

Report of the Junior match against Ellesmere, taken from The Oswestrian Magazine.

Diary entry for 6 February, 1960. A satisfactory day all round.

A considerable number of regular Wednesday and Saturday afternoon football games were cancelled during the course of this wet term which, on the plus side, enabled us to concentrate more on athletics training as for the first time a busy schedule of inter-school running matches lay ahead. 

School House's training programme was also progressing well, and on 30 January the whole school ran the steeplechase, with five of us from Oswald coming in the first eight places.

Senior 1st XI football match against Ellesmere cancelled. Yet another 2nd place behind classmate RA Hughes.

Diary entry for 29 January: Mrs Roberts returns to her cleaning duties.

The mention of Mrs Roberts has served to jog my memory that she had become a go-between, carrying messages, or billets-doux, from me to one of the girls who worked below the school dining room in the cavernous kitchens with Mrs Tudor the school cook. In recent weeks she had gone quiet, coinciding with Mrs Roberts' disappearance through poor health, and I had lost contact with her. Upon returning to her classroom cleaning duties, Mrs Roberts informed me that Iris, the young girl in question, had left her job at school and found alternative employment, but wished to be remembered to me and wanted to know whether we could meet up for a date. Mrs Roberts very kindly offered to let us meet at her place if I was interested. I immediately put pen to paper and asked Mrs Roberts to deliver my reply to Iris, which was in the affirmative. She just grinned, knowingly, and nodded, saying that she and Iris did not live far away, and could easily be reached via the dingle and the back lane adjacent to the school open air pool. Just over a week later we would meet up for our first date.

Photograph taken in the dingle by the pool.

Diary entry for 4 February: CCF announcement.

It was on 4 February,1960 that the above notice was posted in School House for all to see, and my Diary comments speak for themselves. We were just not taking it seriously enough and poor Eric Lloyd, a Senior member of Oswald, returned to school having been stricken by chicken pox. It was good to see him back, and evidently the chicken pox had not adversely affected Eric's appetite for a beer.

Eric, enjoying a beer.

After this debacle of a parade I was summoned to the Headmaster's study, where he threatened to demote me if I did not shape up. About a week earlier I had upset him by asking when he was going to bring the Pavilion Honours' Board up to date, to which he retorted that he had far more important matters to deal with than names on a board. I had been slightly irked by his attitude and took the opportunity, although my timing was bad, to remind him again, and I could tell by the look on his face that he was not amused.

Diary entry for 26 January: Confrontation with the Old Man and hair cut time.

Broken section of the Honour Board found by Vicky Evans.

Even at this early stage I was becoming concerned that my relationship with Major Frankland was becoming fractured, and I resolved to try and see his point of view, but on turning to another page in my Diary I noted a reference to a further confrontation with him. Sadly I can not recall the significance of the Preps!  

Excerpt from Diary, 27 January.

The above entry shows that the House Matches were getting underway, and I took a personal break from playing to spend time with our very promising Junior House team, prior to their forthcoming games against Holbache and Burnaby.

It was about this time during Lent Term, 1960, that I began to question inwardly why I seemed to be constantly at odds with staff members, and although I would not shrink from confrontation when necessary, I have never regarded myself as a belligerent personality. Whether the stress of academic work, combined with my other responsibilities as School Captain of Football, and House Captain of Athletics, duties which I took very seriously, was affecting my ability to cope with it all I can never be sure, but another issue loomed, which I felt should be dealt with, head on, involving Masters JF Tilley and David Lewis.

More about that and ongoing sporting matters in Episode 4.