I had the odd 'run in' with Reggie, all of which were deserved! I remember we were caught performing unauthorised chemistry experiments in the Junior Lab, (D-block) and got into a fair amount of bother. Was he head of Middle School, or Upper? Pretty sure it was middle, but maybe he was promoted(?) while I was there.

He took us for Applied Maths in the sixth form, although we saw him for maybe 10 minutes at the start of the class, when he'd set some questions from old papers and he would occasionally pop in again towards the end to see how we'd got on. Luckily, there were some talented guys in that class, and everyone helped each other. I think everyone passed, most with good grades. Maybe Reggie knew what he was doing after all?

I remember an incident during the lower sixth exams. I used to be mates with Dave 'Secto' Childs. (Where IS he?) So, in the Maths exam he sat behind me; we were seated in alphabetical order. Now Secto was crap at complex numbers, and somehow my answers got left to one side once I'd completed them. Sadly, after the papers had been marked, we were called in for the most enormous bollocking because Secto's answers were the exact same as mine, except everywhere I'd written 'z' he'd written a '2'. (z is commonly used in complex number algebra and my handwriting is shite) He had stuff like 2 = 1 + 3i and so forth, making it patently obvious what had gone on!

My mark was eventually reinstated by Reggie and Rod Watson as Secto fessed up to doing it without my knowledge, bless him!

Ah, happy days. Syms.

p.s. Because of this, nowadays my hand written 'Z's (and '7's) have a cross in them, like the continentals do.

Not for the first time I'm wondering if my post on a teacher was a bit too harsh.......Maybe I was too rough on this man, who in his own way showed a great deal of concern for us, provided that he was convinced we were doing our best to meet the demands the school was making on us. However, the experience I recounted above was very distressing to observe (never mind experience) and still haunts me sometimes, not least because I was partly to blame for the situation and Reggie would not listen to my explanation of why; he assumed that the matter was black and white and told me to stop making excuses for this lad. Rob Munday, in the unlikely event of your reading this please get in touch. I owe you one heck of an apology.

Graham, You need to get some counselling. It sounds like you've been carrying this trauma around your neck for almost thirty years.



Good luck!



Paul T

Thanks for your support, Paul, much appreciated. I'm sorry if it was depressing to read my last post but not all my memories of DHS are happy ones, as you'll have gathered by now if you've read some of my other posts in this section of the forum.

Graham,



I think that Rob Munday would have forgotten all about it, I was with him at Primary School and we were the only 2 from the school to go to DHS. He always took things lightly , I saw him a few years ago and he admitted he still hadn't grown up (like a lot of us) , so I don't think he would be traumatised.

Here's the full story if anyone's interested. Apologies in advance if this is too depressing for some people.



Trevor, I always thought Rob took things lightly until that day. He and his mates used to take the mickey out of me, and sometimes it went too far but I grinned and bore it. Then one day I got made a prefect. Rob again went too far (frankly I can't remember what he said) and I made the mistake of giving him an imposition instead of warning him that, now that I had responsibilities for discipline etc. the boundaries had changed and I couldn't let him get away with it any more. Hindsight's a wonderful thing.



Anyway, he thought I was joking and didn't do the imposition. I was new to the role and panicked and told Reg about it (without telling him of our past "history"). Reg called him down from his lesson and gave him the full treatment, including making him betray his friends by telling him who was with him at the time (which seemed to be his worst nightmare). Believe me, it wasn't pretty, and I had to ride home with him on the bus afterwards as well! I don't know which of us felt worse at that point; I wouldn't have wished it on my worst enemy.



Thanks for trying anyway, Trev. I guess we all screw up sometimes, but not often with such harrowing consequences as this. BTW, why was it considered a privilege anyway for us to do the teachers' dirty work for them - they didn't even pay us?!

Never taught me, but was involved with the Sailing Club for some years, certainly in the early 70's - he used to use his own boat (about a 16-18 foot motor boat with a small cubby) as a rescue boat. Don't remember him actually sailing though.

I can confirm he ran/had some conenction with an hotel on the Hoe, I remember a group of us going back there after a sailing session for hot drinks, one Saturday I think. Can't remember why, but i suspect we had all got soaking wet doing capsize drills, and a warm drink was very welcome.

Yeah I remember that hotel, I think it was called the Merville. He drove an old Rootes car (a Humber Sceptre I think). I recall Rodney commenting on / lamenting the fact that unlike the other poor struggling teachers, Reg wasn't dependent on teaching for his bread and butter (hence, he only worked part time at DHS).

He had a deep scar on the top of one of his hands, a legacy from a bad accident he had when he was an electrical engineer.

Yes, you're right about the car, I remember now that it was a green Humber Sceptre, quite a smart car in those days. I didn't realise he was part-time, but what you say makes sense.