5. Early Lessons

Stairs to All Floors
Photographed in 2014

These are the stairs that led to almost 10,000 lessons during my time at EGS. There were two staircases, one at each end of the school's central block, and four lifts, two at each end. We seldom took the lifts because the crowds and queues made them slower. We preferred the rush upstairs, the dash through corridors and the orderly line at the classroom door. 

Once, when pupils complained that the distances between classrooms made them late for lessons, Mrs Betts conducted her own research. She discovered that four minutes would be sufficient to complete the journey between the most distant places. This was somehow accepted as demonstrating that no one need be late. But the total time pupils spent on the stairs between lessons, breaks and lunch times must have been very great, nevertheless. Sometimes the traffic would be congested and pupils might be unruly. There were prefects on every landing to control the flow. 

This congested stairs experience taught many of us a life-long habit of rushing upstairs, even in our own homes. I still take two steps at a time up the central, not-moving staircase at tube stations, impatient with crowds and determined to be first to the top. I still take stairs rather than lifts, even when carrying suitcases, and my breathlessness reminds me of my youth when I began each day in the sixth form with a mountaineer's ascent to the top floor. 

Tannoy photographed in 2014

Our movements between lessons were regulated by bleeps on the tannoy system (left), made famous by Clockwise. This film  (written by Michael Frayn, a Blackheath resident at the time) featured a manic headmaster, played by John Cleese, who  controlled his EGS-lookalike school by barking commands into a microphone. Immediate obedience was expected. 

I mainly remember particular teachers and moments, rather than actual lessons, perhaps because of their emotional content (fear, laughter, anxiety) or larger than life characteristics.  My memories now resemble photographs left in the sun, with many areas faded and indistinct. After all, it is 57 years since those early lessons at Eltham Green.