BIRKENHEAD
SCHOOL
0098 Fifth Form
Our real work on the 'O' levels started in the fifth form. Having said that, our main focus wasn't really on the O-levels, but on preparation for the A-levels. Indeed the numbers of O-levels we were allowed to take was limited. Although I was on track to take perhaps 12 O-levels, I was artificially limited to eight. Nothing I could have said would have changed this! The philosophy of the school was that you were there to get to university in general, and to get to Oxford or Cambridge in particular; even Imperial College wasn't really recognised despite the fact that it was the top science university.
Accordingly I had to drop history. At the time I hadn't realised it was fun. However, it has since been one of the subjects that has fascinated me -- though I've never actually studied it formally. I also had to drop German, which didn't worry me at the time. But later, at Imperial, I had to sit a special exam; since the college authorities insisted that you had to have two foreign languages in order to get your degree!
The fact is I was already focusing on science A-levels; aiming for maths, physics and chemistry. These were the disciplines that I studied above all else. Indeed at that stage, although we still had three streams, of 30 pupils each, these were – for the first time - rearranged into one stream of those doing the arts subjects and two streams for those doing science subjects. So the school’s normal practice, of streaming by academic ability, only occurred in the science streams, where my own stream was -- of course -- top. This suited me and, where some of my main competitors (being the brightest of all) had been chosen to jump straight to the sixth form, I eventually achieved the second form prize ('prox acc')! That is the nearest I ever got to being top of a form in Birkenhead School.
As the O-levels approached I did do quite a bit of swatting, but even so it was not that stressful a year. It was certainly much less stressful than the A-levels to come.
It was also the period in which I started to take notice of girls. I was once more very friendly with Brian Wrench. Together we used to catch the bus down to Birkenhead, where we changed buses. The bus stop was where we met girls from the local high school. A group of five or six of us then used to lark around at the bus stop or on the bus itself. We eventually also got around to meeting first thing in the morning, outside our school gates, until the headmaster called me into his study and told me I was bringing the school into disrepute!
The three girls we saw most were Brenda, a fat girl who Brian Wrench eventually married, Carol, a more mousy girl, who I always seemed to be partnered with, and Hazel -- a beautiful redhead who was something of an enigma. When I told her about the money I had earned at Butlins -- I eventually used it to buy my first hi-fi -- she offered to take it off my hands and spend a dirty weekend with me. I still have a suspicion she was deadly serious. At university I bumped into her in the Heaven and Hell coffee bar, in a basement in Soho, and both her wrists were bandaged -- almost as if she had tried to commit suicide. I guess I always was a sucker for girls with problems, and she really was beautiful.
Although we used to go to joint film society sessions with them, I only ever went to one party with them. In fact I only ever went once to a party in the fifth form, and I felt very much out of place. At that stage, and even since, I've always been very shy with girls. I didn't really know what to do with them!
Worst still, by this time Pat and Margaret had moved away to Bebington, and I no longer had them as girlfriends.
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