PAGE TWENTY-THREE: great expectations

Although I had been enjoying The Beatles' music since I was in sixth class at Belmont Public School, I had never owned a Beatles album, and had just one or two of their EPs (extended play seven inch records, which usually contained four songs). Apart from those I had only heard their music on the radio, or at a friend's place.

When it was announced that they were releasing an exotic new record called Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, I asked my parents if I could have a copy for my fifteenth birthday. When I found that Mum now had the record in the house, I was mad with excitement. I couldn't wait to hear it. Radio stations mainly played singles, and very little of it had been heard on the Newcastle stations I listened to.

I found that it was every bit as interesting as the publicity had made out.  There were so many layers, you could listen to the whole album, concentrating on Paul McCartney's inventive bass guitar lines, or you could try to ignore the lead vocal and listen instead to the vocal harmonies accompanying the main part.

I think Paul Stocks took this picture of me

When I bought a copy of the sheet music, I  was shocked to discover that it only contained some of the songs, and only parts of some of the ones it did include. The notation had been done poorly and was not a good representation of the sounds I heard on the record.

So I had a crack at playing the songs on the piano, as I heard them. It wasn't hard to improve on the shoddy job done by the person who had done the piano/vocal arrangement.

It was a lot of fun working the songs out for myself. I learnt a lot about chords and chord progressions from listening, playing and also reading the chord symbols on popular sheet music.

But sometimes I would be stumped. I remember, a little later, trying to play Penny Lane. Most of it was easy: I loved the descending, walking bass line in the verse, but was frustrated by a mysterious chord change in the chorus. Whatever was the chord on the capitalised word?

Penny Lane is in my EARS
and in my eyes

It sounded like a chord change, but none seemed to work.
Try as I might, I could not find a suitable chord. So next time I was in Newcastle for a piano lesson, I went to Palings music store, bought the sheet music for 35 cents and discovered that the chord is the tonic chord, the same as the preceding one, but is in first inversion [the bass note is the original middle note of the chord].
THAT was a revelation to me, much the same as the odd bass notes in The Beach Boys' God Only Knows were to Paul McCartney.



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PAGE FOURTEEN: a new beginning

Moving from our old school on the hill to our decagon in Livingstone St was like emerging from the dark ages into the renaissance. But historically this happened gradually, whereas for us it was instantaneous.

At our old school, we had dark classrooms and old, old desks with inkwells in them. We were not allowed to use those new-fangled biros. I always hated the inkpens. I made a mess trying to write, partly because as a left-hander, my hand would smudge the page as it moved across. I tried using a blotter, but I still managed to muck it up.

We had to use old-fashioned cursive script, with all the loops, which should have looked something like this:

Mine never did! I used to get good marks for Arithmetic, which, for some reason, was always out of 200, and for the other subjects, which were all out of 100. I enjoyed most subjects, but endured sport and other physical high jinks. My marks for Writing were nearly always 60/100.

Fifth class was particularly a trial. I copped Mr Sheehan again, having had him as my teacher in third class. It was fairly boring, because he used the same songs and stories as we'd had the first time round. I think the arithmetic, spelling and social studies were different.

But I enjoyed sitting next to Ian Nickalls. He was a nice-natured kid and used to tease me about my pale skin. He called me brown legs. Ian introduced me to the Top 40. He used to bring hit parade charts to school. He used to enjoy Gerry and the Pacemakers singing I Like It and How Do You Do It?

One day the teacher asked us what we would like to do when we left school. I'm not sure Ian quite understood the question, because when it was his turn, he said

I think I might read a book.

Funny the things you remember. (But I often find the person in the tale has completely forgotten the main thing you remember them by.)

But, in 1964, we moved to a brand new ten-sided school, with new classrooms, new desks, new biros, modified cursive, without all those confounded loops and ... girls. I may have been only eleven at the beginning of 1964, but I thought girls were not the kind of creatures you would choose to be separated from!

When we were told we were going to have a new school with the girls, there were whispers about a new girl called Helen Scott. I think she was new to the girls school and was beating everyone else there. My friend, Glen Davies and I were intrigued and were looking forward to meeting her. We were informed that she was blonde and very bright.

My last year of primary school was very enjoyable. We had a wonderful teacher that year. His name was Les Milne. He was a warm, kindly man who treated us with courtesy. I enjoyed his readings from The Hobbit immensely.

Towards the end of the year, my friend Leonard and I were invited to do a tour of the classrooms playing our two party pieces (both Beatles songs, of course): If I Fell and I Should Have Known Better. Leonard played his steel string guitar and I played my 48 bass piano accordion.


Here is a photo of our brand new school. Notice the lovely creatures in front:

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PAGE ELEVEN: the school on the hill

Belmont Infants School was quite enjoyable. Our teachers were all women and were mainly kind and friendly, though I found Mrs Cook, my teacher in second class to be a bit severe.

Mrs Sheehan, my teacher in first class, was a lovely natured person. I don't think you would find anyone who would have a bad word to say about her. I had an unpleasant encounter with her once, but it was all my own fault.

Someone told me to jump over a cliff, gave me some rope, and I stupidly jumped. Well, actually a certain little boy in the picture told me to write some rude words on the toilet wall and gave me some chalk. So I did! Can you guess what happened next? You got it! He went straight to Mrs Sheehan and told her that David McKay had written some rude words on the toilet wall.

I think she had the situation sussed pretty well, and she simply gave me a cloth to go and wipe off MRS BLOODY BUGGAR from the toilet wall. (I had thought that bugger would be spelt like beggar.)

When we were promoted to primary school, boys and girls were separated. I don't know about other primary schools in the 1960s, but I do know that most high schools were single sex. In fact, Belmont High School was the first coeducational state school in the Newcastle area. People were sure that the girls would get pregnant if you put boys and girls together.

I found Belmont Public School, from third to fifth class, to be a rather brutal place. The boys swore like troopers and were very rough with one another. And many of the teachers (all male) spent quite a lot of time caning little boys. It seems odd that the wives of the men could manage us in second class without whacking us continually, but the men didn't seem to be able to the following year.

I got the cane ten times in primary school: nine times for talking in class, and once because I moved during an assembly. I moved because a teacher pushed me, then reported me for moving! That's pretty close to my experience in first class, come to think of it. Except that the boy who gave me the chalk didn't actually force me to write the graffiti.

It amazes me that children were allowed to leave the playground and wander off to the shops to buy lunch, even though the school had its own tuckshop. I used to sit with Neville Chiplin at lunch time, and he would go to the fish and chip shop and buy himself two shillings worth of scollops and come back with quite a large greasy package to scoff. Neville and I are standing together in the top row of the photo: I'm the kid with the glasses, and Neville is on my right.

One day he told me a poem his father had taught him and I still remember it, after all these years:

With the hemlines coming up
And the necklines going down
I don't know what it's all leading to -
But I'm going to stick around

As I recall, Neville and I spent a bit of time together at the boys' school on the hill, with the Moreton Bay fig tree roots breaking up the asphalt. I don't remember seeing him much after that.
But one day in the late 70s, after having not seen each other for about fifteen or sixteen years, a petrol station attendant in Milton, Queensland asked me:

Do you come from down south?

(Queenslanders call the rest of Australia down south.) I told him I did, and he then asked me if I had attended Belmont High School. I was amazed that although he and I looked quite different, he knew who I was immediately, and after he asked me whether I came from Belmont, I instantly knew who he was.

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PAGE FIVE: school

I've been pondering this photo today. I think I started at Belmont Infants School, just before I turned five in September, 1957 and that this was my class the following year.
My first teacher was called Miss Hunter. I could already read a few letters and words, but Miss Hunter soon showed me there was more to learn.


She got us to recognise the first letter in our names. I was sure that the boy third from the end in the second row would have to begin his name with F, but Miss Hunter said his name began with a P. But what kind of a name is Pilip, I mused?
There are forty children in the class photo. I wonder how many Infants teachers today would consider teaching all of those children in the one class? I think I can put a name to the faces of fifteen of the children (with a bit of help from some facebook friends today). I recognise others, but can't think of their names.
It is wonderful to be in touch with two of the people in this photo, and others I went to school with, through internet link ups.
It is such a different world from the one we were born into.
Back in the 1950s, children walked to school. We didn't live far away, but we did walk, and on our own, even though most of our mothers didn't go to work outside the home. They'd pick us up if it was raining.

It may seem strange to think that the little boy with the glasses on asked Jesus to be his Saviour on Christmas Day, 1957. Surely too early to understand the ramifications? But as I have grown, my faith has deepened. I have have spent my whole life (so far) investigating the Bible, because I believe it to be the word of God to me.

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