Imagine what my life has been. Imagine how special, sparkly and fantastic it is to grow up as a Donut Child. I write this a couple of weeks before the 1970-80 reunion. We were so bloody lucky. We attended and 'pretended' at school. We sat the London University Board of exams. Note to you all GCSE'rs out there we had it tough. Your exam board was EEEASY! Yeah! so tough that I sat all of my O'levels with dripping wet hair as I managed to arrive 5 minutes late for every exam, fresh from the Water Ski Club that I had opened at 4.30 am. It wasn't always an early start for me as a couple of nights a week I had been wandering around CESSAC, Larnaca and occasionally the George Club until I had to open the Ski Club. Decent memories of waiting for the shift bus at 4.30 am, talking to Ken R, carving out initials into the bus stop, wondering if it would turn up and being joined by a couple of the saddle club lot - smelly people!
We had the most fantastic teachers, the only one I can remember being up her own arse was Miss Smith, Domestic Science Teacher. The rest were pretty cool. I think they enjoyed the environment as much as we did. We had Keith Thomas as Headmaster, he was terrific and having married one of his own sixth formers in his previous life was able to understand us. The best bloke was Ron Norster - he kept a few 'Knuckle Dusters' in his desk drawer and when he disciplined the Boys he would deliberately open his desk drawer and watch their faces pale! He was always wonderful with me but I do remember he used to drive a big white Volvo...very badly. Ron loved his brakes! Max Brown....oh I was so in love with Max! Dave Abraham's, one of the most forward thinking teachers of his time - I was just too young to realise this. Pete Corr, brilliant musician, great bloke who got me through my O Level Art and part of The Corrs Dynasty (not a lot of you know that!) The list goes on.
How many pupils did we have to a class- I think the max was about 15. My little boy, who cannot bear to be in a classroom with 38 kids would love this environment. All he does is watch the outside world and wish he was there, running free, as we did.....
I lived in Belmont Village. One of the best things about living in Belmont was the bedrooms were very low to the ground and the kitchens had lots of slatted windows that you could break into. This meant that we could jump out of our bedroom windows when the parents had gone off to bed. I had a bit of an obstruction in the guise of a 'bugger off' large Cactus Spiky thing. The Cactus did not scare me, just the resident within it. A very large grass snake that I nicknamed Charly. Unfortunately Charly would stick his head out just as I had put my lip gloss on and was lowering myself from the bedroom window to go out for the night! He scared the shit out of me, but despite his size he was harmless!
Lots of great times at BFBS - Wireless for the Blind, Marc Tyley, Simon Guettier, Charly Lowndes, Alan Grace . They were young men doing their job but putting up with all of us Donut Kids that wanted to be Radio Stars!
I am going to post this Blog on most of the Donut Kids' pages. Please tell me your memories, even if you are not attending the reunion.
Namaste
Lynette xx
Great memories of playing in U-Boat with Marc Tyley on Lead guitar, Pete Corr on Bass, Ian Holford on vocals, Tony 'Skins' Bennett on drums and myself on 2nd guitar.
ReplyDeleteIt was a welcome relief from the 'dayjob' and took us to some fascinating places and met some great people. I have fond memories of standing in for an excellent young guitarist at the school production of "Joseph". I always thought he would have done a better job but I was happy to have the opportunity.
Through Marc, I attended many of the BFBS parties which added to the sheer magic of the island ... which has never worn off! xx