The Ferry School and Dead Fish
by Derek Freeman
Genre: Memoir
Swearwords: A few strong ones.
Description: The following relates to George and I and what happened when we looked after the tropical fish belonging to the school during the summer holidays. It also tells of what we thought of certain teachers. And there are a few lines relating to our first experience of shoplifting.
_____________________________________________________________________
Although not thoroughly academic, I survived and enjoyed my time at South Queensferry Junior Secondary School. Chemistry and rural science (gardening) were the subjects I really enjoyed, but that was about all. The rest of classes at school were in my eyes a waste of time. There were so many things to enjoy instead of sitting listening to some silly old sod trying to teach me about right-angle triangles, algebra, or equations.
Mr Mitchell, our woodwork teacher, was a small wiry man with not much patience and he always reeked of stale tobacco smoke. I got on fine with him, with one exception: a stink bomb was dropped in class and to avoid my classmates receiving six of the belt I was forced to own up. Today he would have been jailed for assault and I would have, no doubt, been put on the Naughty Step.
Metal washers from the woodwork room came in handy for the snooker room in the Town Hall. When we had a game of snooker we were required to pay six old pence for the power to light up the table. These washers were a perfect fit for the meter. I also learned how to work with wood, and many of the things I was taught by Mr Mitchell have come in useful through the years.
While the girls from our class were taught how to cook and make beds at a smaller school (the wee school, where the library now stands) at the bottom of the YWCA brae, Mr Manifield taught the boys gardening and chemistry.
He was a fat balding man who spoke through his nose, the waistcoat buttons of his grey checked suit almost popping as they strained against his large rounded paunch.
Chemistry was one subject I enjoyed so much that I ‘borrowed’ chemicals from the science room to conduct my own experiments and construct small bombs at home.
Each year as the summer holidays approached he would ask for volunteers to tend the tank of tropical fish in the science room and to look after the greenhouse in the school garden.
The tropical fish had been tended for many years by successive science teachers, and during the holidays volunteer pupils had fed the angels and guppies and cleaned the fish tank. Ulterior motives in mind, which George and I had discussed earlier, we decided to volunteer. ‘Please sir, George and I will do it.’
We received instructions to pick up the keys from the Head Master’s home each morning and if required feed the fish, then make our way to the school garden to water the tomatoes and take care of anything else that required our assistance.
Selling tomatoes was the easy part, not that we were supposed to sell them, but we did, together with other vegetables, and made a few shillings each day.
Feeding tropical fish was the last thing on our minds.
Eventually we remembered the fish, but it was too late. We could smell something was not right when we entered the building and the smell grew stronger the nearer we got to the science room. The water in the fish tank resembled Cock-a-leekie soup, the only difference there were dead fish floating on the top and the smell was, well terrible.
‘For fuck sake, George, how do we get out of this?’ ‘We better try to clean it up a bit,’ George replied.
As I lifted the rotting fish from the tank, George decided to drain the stagnant water and there was only one way to do that.
As part of a science lesson, we had been shown how to siphon water from the tank; George had his lips around one end of the rubber tube, with the other end held an inch or so from the bottom of the tank.
A couple of seconds later he started coughing and staggering with the Cock-a-Leekie fish tank water running from his nose and mouth. ‘Fuck,’ he shouted. ‘Fuckin hell.’
Still coughing and gagging from the intake of the stagnant water, he shouted, ‘I’ve been fuckin poisoned, I’ve been fuckin poisoned.’ ‘Fucking shut up and wash your mouth out,’ I replied. ‘It’s okay for you, you never swallowed that shite.’ ‘You wanted to show how smart you were, so fuck off,’ I replied as I doubled over laughing at him.
Still gagging, he ran to the sink. In his panic he failed to see the sign warning of very hot water. Now suffering from scalded hands and stagnant water poisoning, he left me to siphon off the remainder of the water. George did recover and returned the following day, and to our surprise some baby guppies and angels that had not been swallowed did survive. The fish had a few weeks to grow to their normal size and at the start of school they and the tank looked almost normal.
Miss Thompson was the terror of the Maths class and it was because of her that most of us decided to play truant.
She was a rather large woman, in many ways like Frosty Knickers from the television programme ‘The Chase’. She had been known to use her wooden ruler on many occasions, if not on pupils’ knuckles, on their heads. Chalk was another of her favourite weapons, her face glowing red with temper, she would write ‘CHEAT’ in capital letters on the back of any pupil she had seen talking.
Miss Thompson should have been locked up, but back in the fifties and sixties teachers were allowed to legally assault pupils.
When we changed class at the end of a lesson we had the opportunity to leave school without being noticed. If not then, we just didn’t return to school after lunch.
Ian and I decided we would rather be caught playing truant than face Miss Thompson in the Maths class and decided we would leave at lunch time.
Unknown to us, three other pupils from our class had the same thing in mind. Two missing from class isn’t too noticeable, but five! The following morning we were called to the Head Master’s office and asked to explain ourselves. Following a pep talk regarding our education and future behaviour, we were each given six of the belt, more legalized assault, and warned that any repetition would result in all of us being expelled. I will not go into details of how the Head Master found out; suffice to say we all had younger brothers and sisters at the same school.
Mr Watson was a tall gangly man with sharp features. He taught us English. It wasn’t one of my favourite subjects, but I did okay, especially so when we were told to write an essay about any subject that we fancied. I wrote an essay regarding the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. Mr Watson said it was one of the best he had seen and shared my success with almost every teacher in the school. Little did he, or any of the other teachers, know that the essay I had written was mostly, with slight changes, copied from the back pages of a comic named the Eagle in which the famous Dan Dare and the Mekon appeared.
The majority of our free time was spent fishing from the harbour and most of what was caught was thrown back. The occasional flounder or plaice were the only fish worth keeping. Some of the older guys, instead of fishing, hunted large edible crabs at Long Craig.
When we were fed up with fishing we would steal apples from Hope Cottage opposite the chapel or from gardens at the Back Braes. We became so successful at stealing apples and pears from Tom Walker’s garden, we graduated to shoplifting.
My first experience at shoplifting began when we were returning home from Murrayfield Ice Rink. Andrew, a close friend of mine, told me he had done it many times. ‘It’s simple,’ he said. ‘Watch me, then try it.’ The well known chain store of Woolworths in Princess Street, Edinburgh, was our target. Six of us had been ice skating and caught a tram to the East End of Princess Street. In 1957/58 the counters were two to three feet wide in the shape of a rectangle, with the counter assistant in the centre.
These counters were packed with all sorts of goods, and when the assistant was busy serving a customer at one side it was so easy to lift something from the other and walk out.
There was no CCTV or mobile phones and no doubt the store detective, if there was one, was busily employed drinking tea or coffee. I saw how easy it was to slip small objects into a pocket and walk out. I can remember stealing a small bottle of radioactive paint, the type that glows in the dark, but there were many more trips to Woolworths and many small items stolen from that store.
Andy and Tom Walker were the owners of two shops in Queensferry. Tom owned a small grocery shop at the Cross Roads, almost directly under the Forth Road Bridge. His brother Andy owned the larger of the two shops at the Bellstane on Queensferry High Street.
The small shop under the Bridge was our next target, Tom’s house was attached to his shop and when it was quiet he spent his time reading in an adjoining room. When the shop door was opened a small bell rung to warn Tom someone had entered, but when six or seven noisy children came in at once he had a difficult time trying to serve them. The door was kept open by Jim’s foot while Brian reached in and lifted two or three bottles of lemonade from their storage place on the floor. When this was happening, one of our friends in the shop would also be stealing small bars of chocolate and penny caramels.
Each Sunday, dressed in grey flannels and sports jacket, with a shilling in my pocket for the collection, I was sent to the local Sunday School at the church on the Vennel. After a few months of singing hymns and listening to some silly old fart reading from the bible, I decided to join my mates enjoying themselves. One of our favourite haunts on a Sunday was the small café at the Hawes Pier, now known as the Railbridge Bistro. A foot massage machine stood just outside the front door. It was six old pence to make you feel as if you were walking on air. We soon discovered that the majority of sixpence pieces fell to the ground under the machine. As one or two of our friends tilted it to one side, there was a mad scramble to pick up as many sixpence pieces as possible. This only continued for three to four weeks until the fault was discovered.
Whilst we were stealing the small items from Tom Walker’s, another of our friends, Kenny, had gone for bigger things in the Hillwood Co-op store on the High Street. He began stealing to order, but eventually was caught and dealt with by the local police.
That quietened things down for a while, but it wasn’t long before we returned to thieving.
It was Guy Fawkes night 1959 and each year the Royal Navy from Port Edgar held a fireworks display and bonfire at the rear of the captain’s house at Upper Butlaw.
We were always early, watching the naval ratings preparing for the display and hoping we could somehow get our hands on some of the fireworks.
That night, a rating placed a sack on the ground about four feet from us behind a tape barrier; although we had no idea what it contained, we were about to find out.
I slipped under the tape, grabbed the sack and quickly disappeared into the darkness, my friends running at my back. I had stolen six flares, the type where the striker is taken from the bottom and used to ignite the flare by striking the top. We used most of them on our way home, but kept one for later. The same night the last flare was used at Seals Craig on the shores of the River Forth. As the flare burned bright red, someone shouted, ‘Police.’ The flare was thrown over the wall into the river and we ran.
Had the police arrived, we never knew, but we were told a lifeboat was launched the same night as the flare was ignited at the Seals Craig.
Swearwords: A few strong ones.
Description: The following relates to George and I and what happened when we looked after the tropical fish belonging to the school during the summer holidays. It also tells of what we thought of certain teachers. And there are a few lines relating to our first experience of shoplifting.
_____________________________________________________________________
Although not thoroughly academic, I survived and enjoyed my time at South Queensferry Junior Secondary School. Chemistry and rural science (gardening) were the subjects I really enjoyed, but that was about all. The rest of classes at school were in my eyes a waste of time. There were so many things to enjoy instead of sitting listening to some silly old sod trying to teach me about right-angle triangles, algebra, or equations.
Mr Mitchell, our woodwork teacher, was a small wiry man with not much patience and he always reeked of stale tobacco smoke. I got on fine with him, with one exception: a stink bomb was dropped in class and to avoid my classmates receiving six of the belt I was forced to own up. Today he would have been jailed for assault and I would have, no doubt, been put on the Naughty Step.
Metal washers from the woodwork room came in handy for the snooker room in the Town Hall. When we had a game of snooker we were required to pay six old pence for the power to light up the table. These washers were a perfect fit for the meter. I also learned how to work with wood, and many of the things I was taught by Mr Mitchell have come in useful through the years.
While the girls from our class were taught how to cook and make beds at a smaller school (the wee school, where the library now stands) at the bottom of the YWCA brae, Mr Manifield taught the boys gardening and chemistry.
He was a fat balding man who spoke through his nose, the waistcoat buttons of his grey checked suit almost popping as they strained against his large rounded paunch.
Chemistry was one subject I enjoyed so much that I ‘borrowed’ chemicals from the science room to conduct my own experiments and construct small bombs at home.
Each year as the summer holidays approached he would ask for volunteers to tend the tank of tropical fish in the science room and to look after the greenhouse in the school garden.
The tropical fish had been tended for many years by successive science teachers, and during the holidays volunteer pupils had fed the angels and guppies and cleaned the fish tank. Ulterior motives in mind, which George and I had discussed earlier, we decided to volunteer. ‘Please sir, George and I will do it.’
We received instructions to pick up the keys from the Head Master’s home each morning and if required feed the fish, then make our way to the school garden to water the tomatoes and take care of anything else that required our assistance.
Selling tomatoes was the easy part, not that we were supposed to sell them, but we did, together with other vegetables, and made a few shillings each day.
Feeding tropical fish was the last thing on our minds.
Eventually we remembered the fish, but it was too late. We could smell something was not right when we entered the building and the smell grew stronger the nearer we got to the science room. The water in the fish tank resembled Cock-a-leekie soup, the only difference there were dead fish floating on the top and the smell was, well terrible.
‘For fuck sake, George, how do we get out of this?’ ‘We better try to clean it up a bit,’ George replied.
As I lifted the rotting fish from the tank, George decided to drain the stagnant water and there was only one way to do that.
As part of a science lesson, we had been shown how to siphon water from the tank; George had his lips around one end of the rubber tube, with the other end held an inch or so from the bottom of the tank.
A couple of seconds later he started coughing and staggering with the Cock-a-Leekie fish tank water running from his nose and mouth. ‘Fuck,’ he shouted. ‘Fuckin hell.’
Still coughing and gagging from the intake of the stagnant water, he shouted, ‘I’ve been fuckin poisoned, I’ve been fuckin poisoned.’ ‘Fucking shut up and wash your mouth out,’ I replied. ‘It’s okay for you, you never swallowed that shite.’ ‘You wanted to show how smart you were, so fuck off,’ I replied as I doubled over laughing at him.
Still gagging, he ran to the sink. In his panic he failed to see the sign warning of very hot water. Now suffering from scalded hands and stagnant water poisoning, he left me to siphon off the remainder of the water. George did recover and returned the following day, and to our surprise some baby guppies and angels that had not been swallowed did survive. The fish had a few weeks to grow to their normal size and at the start of school they and the tank looked almost normal.
Miss Thompson was the terror of the Maths class and it was because of her that most of us decided to play truant.
She was a rather large woman, in many ways like Frosty Knickers from the television programme ‘The Chase’. She had been known to use her wooden ruler on many occasions, if not on pupils’ knuckles, on their heads. Chalk was another of her favourite weapons, her face glowing red with temper, she would write ‘CHEAT’ in capital letters on the back of any pupil she had seen talking.
Miss Thompson should have been locked up, but back in the fifties and sixties teachers were allowed to legally assault pupils.
When we changed class at the end of a lesson we had the opportunity to leave school without being noticed. If not then, we just didn’t return to school after lunch.
Ian and I decided we would rather be caught playing truant than face Miss Thompson in the Maths class and decided we would leave at lunch time.
Unknown to us, three other pupils from our class had the same thing in mind. Two missing from class isn’t too noticeable, but five! The following morning we were called to the Head Master’s office and asked to explain ourselves. Following a pep talk regarding our education and future behaviour, we were each given six of the belt, more legalized assault, and warned that any repetition would result in all of us being expelled. I will not go into details of how the Head Master found out; suffice to say we all had younger brothers and sisters at the same school.
Mr Watson was a tall gangly man with sharp features. He taught us English. It wasn’t one of my favourite subjects, but I did okay, especially so when we were told to write an essay about any subject that we fancied. I wrote an essay regarding the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. Mr Watson said it was one of the best he had seen and shared my success with almost every teacher in the school. Little did he, or any of the other teachers, know that the essay I had written was mostly, with slight changes, copied from the back pages of a comic named the Eagle in which the famous Dan Dare and the Mekon appeared.
The majority of our free time was spent fishing from the harbour and most of what was caught was thrown back. The occasional flounder or plaice were the only fish worth keeping. Some of the older guys, instead of fishing, hunted large edible crabs at Long Craig.
When we were fed up with fishing we would steal apples from Hope Cottage opposite the chapel or from gardens at the Back Braes. We became so successful at stealing apples and pears from Tom Walker’s garden, we graduated to shoplifting.
My first experience at shoplifting began when we were returning home from Murrayfield Ice Rink. Andrew, a close friend of mine, told me he had done it many times. ‘It’s simple,’ he said. ‘Watch me, then try it.’ The well known chain store of Woolworths in Princess Street, Edinburgh, was our target. Six of us had been ice skating and caught a tram to the East End of Princess Street. In 1957/58 the counters were two to three feet wide in the shape of a rectangle, with the counter assistant in the centre.
These counters were packed with all sorts of goods, and when the assistant was busy serving a customer at one side it was so easy to lift something from the other and walk out.
There was no CCTV or mobile phones and no doubt the store detective, if there was one, was busily employed drinking tea or coffee. I saw how easy it was to slip small objects into a pocket and walk out. I can remember stealing a small bottle of radioactive paint, the type that glows in the dark, but there were many more trips to Woolworths and many small items stolen from that store.
Andy and Tom Walker were the owners of two shops in Queensferry. Tom owned a small grocery shop at the Cross Roads, almost directly under the Forth Road Bridge. His brother Andy owned the larger of the two shops at the Bellstane on Queensferry High Street.
The small shop under the Bridge was our next target, Tom’s house was attached to his shop and when it was quiet he spent his time reading in an adjoining room. When the shop door was opened a small bell rung to warn Tom someone had entered, but when six or seven noisy children came in at once he had a difficult time trying to serve them. The door was kept open by Jim’s foot while Brian reached in and lifted two or three bottles of lemonade from their storage place on the floor. When this was happening, one of our friends in the shop would also be stealing small bars of chocolate and penny caramels.
Each Sunday, dressed in grey flannels and sports jacket, with a shilling in my pocket for the collection, I was sent to the local Sunday School at the church on the Vennel. After a few months of singing hymns and listening to some silly old fart reading from the bible, I decided to join my mates enjoying themselves. One of our favourite haunts on a Sunday was the small café at the Hawes Pier, now known as the Railbridge Bistro. A foot massage machine stood just outside the front door. It was six old pence to make you feel as if you were walking on air. We soon discovered that the majority of sixpence pieces fell to the ground under the machine. As one or two of our friends tilted it to one side, there was a mad scramble to pick up as many sixpence pieces as possible. This only continued for three to four weeks until the fault was discovered.
Whilst we were stealing the small items from Tom Walker’s, another of our friends, Kenny, had gone for bigger things in the Hillwood Co-op store on the High Street. He began stealing to order, but eventually was caught and dealt with by the local police.
That quietened things down for a while, but it wasn’t long before we returned to thieving.
It was Guy Fawkes night 1959 and each year the Royal Navy from Port Edgar held a fireworks display and bonfire at the rear of the captain’s house at Upper Butlaw.
We were always early, watching the naval ratings preparing for the display and hoping we could somehow get our hands on some of the fireworks.
That night, a rating placed a sack on the ground about four feet from us behind a tape barrier; although we had no idea what it contained, we were about to find out.
I slipped under the tape, grabbed the sack and quickly disappeared into the darkness, my friends running at my back. I had stolen six flares, the type where the striker is taken from the bottom and used to ignite the flare by striking the top. We used most of them on our way home, but kept one for later. The same night the last flare was used at Seals Craig on the shores of the River Forth. As the flare burned bright red, someone shouted, ‘Police.’ The flare was thrown over the wall into the river and we ran.
Had the police arrived, we never knew, but we were told a lifeboat was launched the same night as the flare was ignited at the Seals Craig.
About the Author
Derek Freeman was born in South Queensferry (the Ferry) in the shadow of the Forth Rail Bridge. He now lives in Bo’ness. He has been inspired to write about growing up in the Ferry in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The Ferry School and Dead Fish is the third story in his series of memoirs.