1970s PRIVATE LIFE
0300 Molesey Secondary Schools
Although she was very bright, and hard-working, Sarah was still very fortunate in that she managed to gain entry to the Tiffin Girls School in Kingston. Although this was a state school, it was one of the best in the country. Moreover it was not within our county, but even so she managed to get a scholarship from our county to go there. Accordingly, she got the best education possible, and prospered, without the costing us a penny.
Miles, on the other hand, was not so lucky. After much extra tuition and support he did manage to get into Kingston Grammar School, which was the local public school; though he could have gone to a number of other public schools in our area, for which he also passed the entrance exams. We had to pay for this and, for the first time since the birth of Sarah, Pat went out to work - at the local library. This covered Miles’ fees. On the other hand, she later stopped work just as quickly when we no longer needed this extra money.
I think that Kingston Grammar School was a major mistake for Miles. It was a school which valued academic achievements, but it quietly wrote off children who did live up to its standards; and Miles was one of these. He barely scraped five O-levels. He didn't attend sports. He didn't take part in school activities. In other words, even at that age, he was a dropout.
Even worse, the children he mixed with at the school were also dropouts. We well remember him going across to Kingston to spend the day with a new school friend of his, and being horrified when we were called by the police. He'd been caught in Richmond Park, with his new friend, riding a motorbike which had been dumped there. It turned out that the motorbike was stolen, and the police insisted on charging him with TBA (Taking and Driving Away). I got a solicitor immediately and was willing to take the case court. I thought it was obviously an unfair charge, but Pat wanted to get it out of away, and accepted - on his behalf - a caution. Fortunately that was expunged from his record when he reached the age of 16. But you can see he was typical rebellious teenager. The problem with Miles was that the rebel was always hidden, so we never really knew what was going on.
He subsequently went to the local sixth form college, since he was then living with the woman who had seduced him -- Julie. He didn't do well there either and left to get a job and support her. To give him his credit took the part of bread-winner in her life, providing income, and was quite successful in this respect.
Sarah, on the other hand sailed through her school years at school. Despite her teen tantrums with us, she was the ideal pupil at school, and easily came top of her class. She could do everything, and did it well. She was especially good at art and, as a result, dropped some other subjects to do art at O level. The tragedy was that her art mistress was so desperate to get the students through their O-levels that she kept telling Sarah that she would fail. Although Sarah, in fact gained a distinction, her enjoyment of art was destroyed by this constant criticism. She never continued with art; until her fortieth year!. I think this was a great pity. On the other hand I reassure myself that had she genuinely been motivated to be an artist she would been put off as easily as that.
Miles made a number of friends at each stage of his school career. Though, like all whose careers move them around, the friends disappeared as they moved to different schools. At Church Farm he was friendly with Remee who lived just across the road. Remee was a nice boy whose main claim to fame was that his uncle owned Bejan on Rodeo drive in Los Angeles. This came about because they were an Iranian family who were amongst the followers of the Shah before he was kicked out of Iran. At Kingston grammar school Miles was friends with a Jewish boy, who even managed to get Miles and Sarah on the radio. But that relationship fell apart when Miles was invited to his barmitzvah and illicitly drank so much alcohol that he was violently sick all over the table; that was on something you do not do at a barmitzvah!
He followed this with another school friend, the son of an anaesthetist. The father was very useful when Miles managed to chip his hip as he was skiing down the black run at the local dry slope on his birthday. Incidentally, the nice touch about this was that IBM had only entered us into the BUPA medical health insurance that morning. By the afternoon Miles was claiming several hundred pounds from this scheme. Even so, it was a shame. Miles had been on a skiing trip previously with the school, and had done very well, but that injury destroyed his confidence. On the next the school trip to the alps he went walking instead of skiing.
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