A life in letters: Wishaw High School

I was a pupil at Wishaw High School from the start of my 1st Year in August 1964 until the end of my 6th year in June 1970. Carluke where I lived, five miles away, did not have a six-year Senior Secondary School and so the more academically able pupils attended Wishaw High (with a small number choosing Lanark Grammar School or Dalziel High in Motherwell.) The Latin motto of my new school was ‘Qui non proficit deficit’ – he who doesn’t advance falls behind.

I wasn’t aware of much liaison between my primary school and Wishaw High. There was certainly no ice-breaking familiarisation visit at the end of Primary 7. On the first morning of 1st year, I took the service bus to Wishaw as I would routinely over the next six year (we were provided with season tickets free of charge by Lanark County Council) and turned up at the boys’ side of the playground in Dryburgh Road.

Wearing the statutory blue blazers and regulation grey trousers or skirts we were summoned into the octagonal school hall where we came under the eye of the gowned, austere Rector, Neil McKellar who had a distinguished war record, and retired at in the summer of 1965. He was standing on a lectern which served as the school’s war memorial and added to the impressiveness of his demeanour.

By virtue of the first letter of my surname  I was assigned to Allanton House (there were four Houses, each named after a local area – Allanton, Belhaven, Coltness and Murdostoun) and by virtue of expectations of my performance to class 1A2. This was the second highest class in the year in terms of ability. I must have achieved above expectations in 1964-65, because the following year I was moved up to 2A1, and remained in the top stream for the rest of my school career.

1A2 was directed to Room 2 on the ground-floor corridor close to the back door where we met our registration teacher whom we would see first thing every morning. He was Mr Annand, a gentle, kindly man, a music teacher. I think I recall him saying it was his first day at the school also. He had written our timetable on the board for us to copy down, and set us the task of memorising within the next few days St Paul’s words about the supremacy of love in 1 Corinthians 13 from the Authorised Version of the Bible. I think most of us accomplished this, but soon any activities in registration other than noting who was absent were soon abandoned.

The whole day was spend finding classrooms, meeting teachers, having introductory lessons in largely unfamiliar subjects, and writing down homework assignments. At lunch time, I ventured out of school and walked down Wishaw Main Street. Going into Woolworths, I bought a plastic toy dog on a black base.  This cheerful creature was shaped from small coloured plastic tubes with a taut thread running through them. When you pressed the base, the tension relaxed and the dog collapsed in a heap. When you released the base it sprang into shape again. I secreted this comfort purchase, which no doubt expressed a longing for the securities of childhood into my leather school bag.

Eventually, I was back home in Carluke, sitting in the rocking chair in the living room overlooking the peaceful garden. I had survived the first day, but I knew I would have to return. I rocked back and forwards, learning the contents of the table on the first page of Paterson and MacNaughton’s Approach to Latin, headed ‘The First Conjugation’. ‘Amo, amas amat…..’

The Dryburgh Road building was an elegant, two-storey structure erected in 1928 to house a school which had initially been formed in 1906. The building was basically and E-shape, with a further wing running along the rear. At the heart of the structure, forming most of the middle strut of the E was the impressive octagonal hall, with four windows bearing the crests of the four Houses. In 1964, the corridors running round the inside of the building at both levels were open to the elements at one side, but during my time at the school they were enclosed with wooden and glass panels. The rising school roll had prompted the proliferation of outbuildings – the canteen, and hutted classrooms. The school sat in extensive grounds with playing fields and two blaize pitches.

Unquestionably, the worst thing about the buildings were the toilets. The boys’ loos consisted of two foul, ill-lit rooms, one lined with a grim concrete urinal, the other, across a narrow corridor having perhaps half-a-dozen stalls. In a school of around 800 pupils, this was surely under-provision, and these toilets were fearful places for anyone needing some peace and quiet to get the flow started, and anyone prone to being bullied – I found myself in both categories.

My years at Wishaw High School were not particularly happy ones, but I think this was not so much due to the staff and my fellow-pupils as to my immaturity. I was unsure who I was, and in fact was probably not yet capable of accepting who I was. I felt an expectation from home and from church that I should be a model Christian teenager, and had a mental image of what fulfilling this would entail. I tried so hard to be the person I thought I should be, but the ‘Christian teenager’ role didn’t come naturally to me. However, embracing any alternative model seemed inconceivable. In this tension of identity, I was not unnaturally plagued by anxiety.

I compensated for my lack of self-confidence and self-knowledge by unconsciously cultivating an arrogant, zany image, always deploying abstruse vocabulary so that people mocked me by asking if I’d had a dictionary for breakfast. Beneath the bombast, there was only confusion.

My immediate classmates were largely accepting of me, but I didn’t feel I belonged. And yet I tried so hard to please, especially to please the teachers. This was the 1st Year boy who, when ‘Goof’ Lindsay our Latin teacher didn’t turn up for a lesson, rather than accept the gift of time to lark around, left the class, and walked resolutely to the Rector’s office to inform that fearsome individual of the matter. I following Neil Mckellar back, along the open corridor, to Goof’s classroom watching his black gown billowing.

This was the boy who was so eager to help at the school’s Christmas Fayre one Saturday morning (organised by ‘Granny’ Young, stern history teacher, who in her role in those days before the creation of guidance posts, as ‘advisor’ to female pupils was reputed to wield the measuring tape to ensure that skirts were of regulation length) that he turned up at the school door an hour before anyone else had arrived. Later he was so heart-broken at being reprimanded by Miss Young for agreeing with a buyer a price for an item which fell short of her perception of its worth that he lost confidence in his ability to contribute further to the event and went home early. This boy was an odd child.

During my time at Wishaw High I studied, to one level or another, Maths, English, Arithmetic, History, Geography, Technical Drawing, PE, Latin, French, Physics and Chemistry. I left with 8 ‘O’ Levels, 5 Highers (English at A, French at B, and Maths, Latin and History at C, and a C in Certificate of Sixth Year Studies (English.) I only scraped through Higher Maths, the services of a tutor whom my parents engaged to come to the house to support my learning having made little difference. Having achieved a C in Higher History in 5th year, I repeated it in my final year, but ended up with another C – at a lower band.

I had jumped through the hoops with reasonable competence, but I had not been taught to learn, or to think for myself. At the end of my school career, I still equated learning with memorising information. For me, studying largely meant pacing up and down in my bedroom committing to memory the facts and views I had taken down in my jotter at a teacher’s dictation. And I was not a particularly conscientious student  - I’d have Radio 4 playing on my transistor radio with the sound turned down when my parents thought I was studying, listening to the evening comedy slot. A small hooray, perhaps, that I sometimes rebelled.

I view my years at Wishaw High School in a mosaic of memories, both major and insignificant. I remember the crates of milk which were delivered each morning to the back of the school. At that point, milk was still supplied for secondary as well as primary pupils, but there was no effective distribution system, and we were free to grab as many of the third-of-a-pint bottles as we wanted.

I remember the morning a large piece of equipment was delivered to the school – it was, I think, an electrical switch box for installation in the janitor’s room. It was too big to be manoeuvred up the front steps of the school and through the front door into the hallway, so it was unloaded at the back entrance, and cautiously edged along the corridor on rollers until it reached its final resting place. According to the branding on the switch box, it had been made in Bootle, and someone (probably me) wondered if the device was actually a computer, in which case it would have been, I said, a ‘Compootle from Bootle’ – a reflection, if nothing else, of our awareness of the existence, and dimensions of computers.

I remember the day (20th September 1967) when the liner Queen Elizabeth II (QE2) was launched on the Clyde by the Queen and Prince Philip, watched according to the BBC report by ‘tens of thousands of people’. There had been much speculation on possible names for the vessel which curiously some of us pupils entered into. I remember someone listening to the launch ceremony on a radio in the playground at afternoon break, and excitedly announcing the chosen name.

I remember the Young Enterprise Company which some of my year group were involved in setting up under the Young Enterprise scheme which had been initiated in 1962/63, and the filming of a television report on some of their activities. I recall Margaret Campbell and some others walking nonchalantly along the upper corridor being tracked by a cameraman.

I remember the prefects, appointed from among the senior pupils, who stood at strategic points in the corridors keeping the crocodiles of pupils in order. I also remember the sense of injustice I felt when, for a minor misdemeanour, I was assigned by one prefect the task of writing out the whole of Psalm 119, which seemed disproportionate and vindictive. In my 6th year, I myself wore a prefect’s badge, but I have no recollection of carrying out prefectly duties.

I remember the annual sports day, which always seemed to take place in bright sunshine. Being utterly inept on the sports field, I was never involved in any way, but the whole school was released from classes for the appointed afternoon. We’d sit in small groups on the grass around the playing field, and there would be card schools, and Radio 1, and though made perfectly welcome by the others, I would once again feel that I didn’t really belong.

I remember taking part in a presentation arranged by an English teacher, Mr Mason, when I was in my 2nd year on the theme ‘Songs and poems of World War I.’  This was one element of an evening event in the school hall which also included two short dramatic performances, including scenes from Pygmalion. Our segment including songs – I remember Sunset song, It’s a long way to Tipperaray, and Mademoiselle from Armentiers. ‘Who was it tied his kilts with string, to stop him from doing….’ Mr Mason was dictating the words, and paused mischievously after ‘doing’ while we savoured the various possibilities. Once we had rewarded him with the anticipated titter, he continued with the remainder of the line ‘…from doing the Highland Fling.’ A couple of senior pupils duetted on If you were the only girl in the world, and that stirred and beguiled me. What were those ‘wonderful things’ the boy and girl would do to one another? My particular role was to proclaim Wilfred Owen’s Anthem for doomed youth. I enjoyed the limelight. I enjoyed getting my tongue round ‘Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle can patter out their hasty orisons.’ I enjoyed being at school in the warm glow of evening, when the corridors were safe. I enjoyed seeing Mr Mason, his wife, and two small kids at the event. It all made me feel, momentarily, that I was more at the heart of things.

I remember standing one day in the boys’ lines. Someone has a copy of Fanny Hill, and some of the others are pouring over well-thumbed pages, and sniggering. I feel both attracted and mildly shocked. Another day someone sitting beside me in music cheerfully announces (possibly aiming to wind me up) that he has what I think he calls a ‘hard one’ though no doubt what he actually says is ‘hard on’. I am prudish and disdainful. The graffiti on the wall read ‘Have you started yet?’ which I assumed referred to wet dreams rather than sexual activity. I similarly assumed that ‘nookie’, another word ubiquitous in the places in the school which played host to graffiti referred to semen, when it would in fact have referred to the sexual act. I didn’t know how to handle this obsession with sex in others, and was both troubled and energised by my own growing sexual awareness.

I remember the few school trips I was involved with. Someone (I think it was history teacher Maurice Bonner) organised a trip to the Dumfries area when I was in 2nd year. You could visit two destinations out of the three on offer – Sweetheart Abbey, Caerlaverock Castle, and Chapelcross Atomic Power Station. In the event, I think I only saw the latter. I was impressed by the resonance of the sign on the gate: United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, but my only recollection of my time there was of searching for a toilet - by then I was afflicted by a tiresome toilet anxiety while travelling. We had a fish and chip tea in a Co-operative Hall in Dumfries, but by then I was tired and stressed

The only other trips I recall were to Glasgow (at that point a city of massive holes in the ground as the inner city flank of the M8 was constructed) to see Oedipus Rex and Charade at the Cosmo Cinema, The Battle of Britain at the ABC, and St Joan at the King’s Theatre. Charade, the first feature film I had ever seen was magic, but I wasn’t sufficiently relaxed to enjoy the other performances.

I remember the times the school decamped en masse to Wishaw Old Parish Church in the Main Street. There was a Christmas service each year when traditionally the boy and girl Captains would read Matthew and Luke’s account of the nativity and other pupils would participate. I remember a smallish boy singing one year, and approaching him enthusiastically afterwards, telling him I thought he was ‘a great wee singer.’ It was only when I saw a puzzlingly bemused and slightly belligerent expression crossing his face that I realised that he was at least one year above me, and I felt suitably embarrassed.

The annual prizegiving ceremonies were also held in the Old Parish Church, and ordeal for anyone with toilet anxiety as we had to listen to some worthy droning on before the distribution of prizes began. I remember taking part in the choir at one of these events, singing tenor in Magnify, glorify and in Rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham, though I remember taking advantage of the fact that being up-front to suing took you near the door leading through to the toilets to sneak out when everyone else was singing.

Most years in the upper school I was awarded one prize or another.  You were told how much money had been allocated for your prize, and then chose from Collins catalogue – the school, or the Education Authority must have had some special deal with the Glasgow-based publishers, and extensive though the coverage of the catalogue was, this somewhat limited one’s choice. The ordering of prizes was co-ordinated by biology teacher Miss ‘Bella’ Hogg, who ran the girls’ Scripture Union group, and had problems with classroom discipline, but who bravely persevered in what she no doubt found a somewhat stressful occupation.

My prize choices were a combination of what I thought I should be reading (War and Peace in the 3-volume Everyman edition and Philip Zeigler’s The Black Death for example) but didn’t ever get round to, and what actually attracted me (such as a paperback biography of Rasputin and some reflections by Neville Cardus on the life and work of orchestral conductor Sir Thomas Beecham.)

And then there are memories of a couple of things I didn’t do. I never attended a school dance, or participated in dance practices in PE periods in the weeks before Christmas. I assumed that such activities should be proscribed in a Christian family, although perhaps in this I was being more of a zealot than my parents. It was difficult to know what they would consider acceptable. I agreed to go to an inter-schools Burns Supper in January 1970, and wrote a poem for the event, a lame parody of Tam O’Shanter in which a modern-day Tam was pursued over the old brig by ‘helicops’ in a helicopter, equipped with breathalysers (breathalysers having been introduced in 1967.) However, attending this event was the second thing I didn’t do, because my parents (to whom I did not explain the extent of my commitment) expressed their disquiet at my involvement. Rather than insisting on going as a self-determining 17-year-old, or coming clean to my parents about my commitment to read the poem, or asking someone at school to try to talk my parents round, I simply lied about being unwell on the day of the event. My classmate Yvonne M. Davis went to the Supper in my place and read my Tam O’Shanter parody, to some acclaim, she told me the next day.

In general, however, I had a little more self-confidence by the time I was in 6th year, but much of the time I was still hiding behind the arrogant, verbose persona. That year I took part in the school opera, HMS Pinafore, helped edit the 1970 issue of the school magazine The Octagon, was one of a team of pupil librarians, was President of the Debating Society, and spent some free periods sitting in on a Higher Music Class, getting to know rather well Wagner’s Mastersingers overture, and Bartok’s Music for strings, percussion and celesta.

Some of my Higher History studies in 6th year were spent in the class of Mr ‘Dougie’ Hope with whom we explored European History from an ever-so-boring, unillustrated door-stopper of a book with small type in a font with curious, diamond-shaped full stops. Dougie’s classroom was in one of the new hutted accommodation erected during my time at the school on one of the blaize pitches. I remember going out to see him one wintry lunchtime. It had been snowing, and the ground was covered. A group of younger pupils were throwing snowballs, and when they saw me, whether in fun or from malice I don’t know, I became the target. I hurried up the steps to Dougie’s hut – I could see him through the window, warm and dry inside in his short sleeves.  I tried the door, but he had locked it.  Snowballs were thudding against me, the door, the window. I knocked, sure that Dougie would let me in, as a responsible 6th pupil. I knocked again. And again. I had in the end to walk away, through a deluge of snow, feeling humiliated and unvalued.

My 6th year concluded at the end of June 1970. There wasn’t much drama on the last day of term, other than the suspending of a bra from the very apex of the octagonal school hall’s roof. Only a little wistful, I walked away, never to return.

22 years later, Wishaw High School closed permanently, and the building was demolished in 1998.

See School teachers - Wishaw High School