Figure 1.--.

My account covers the greater part of the 1960’s. It starts in Africa where there were still British colonies and ends in a city in Northern England. It is a tale of contrasts. I was born in Africa to older parents and I am an only child. I was in a school in Africa which was modelled entirely on an English prep school. It had about a hundred and twenty boys, all of whom were being groomed to pass the common entrance exam so they could go to a major public school in Britain. Although we never thought of it as such, it was obviously a school for privileged boys being prepared to enter elite schools. To us it was the only place we had known so it seemed completely normal; as did our manners, interests and the way we dressed and spoke.

Africa

Prep school

Our basic school uniform was grey cotton drill shorts and a grey cotton drill short-sleeve shirt with breast pockets with buttoned down flaps. The trousers were held up with a snake belt in the school colours of green and yellow (see attachment A). We wore short grey socks and brown shoes either lace-ups or sandals. Generally I had Clarks Lysander sandals with crepe soles (see attachment B) or plain lace-ups also by Clarks with the same crepe sole. In my last year I persuaded my mother to buy me a pair of “Little Duke” brown toe-capped leather-soled shoes, identical to my best friend's and in both our eyes the height of sophistication. Outside we had to wear a grey felt hat with a round crown and a reasonably wide brim. In the colder months, it was never that cold, we could wear a grey “V neck grey jersey with the school's colours around the neck. When it was wet we could wear gumboots but cannot remember us having any waterproof clothing. For sports we had fairly basic plimsolls, which we called “tackies”, shorts with elasticised tops and tee shirts. One of the punishments for detention was to carry the wooden chairs that parents sat upon when watching school matches. While all the school was dressed in their best, detention boys wore dark blue shorts and tee shirts. So like convicts visitors and parents alike knew we had been in trouble. For swimming we had those very skimpy bathing costumes which looked like briefs but of a dark heavier material.

On more formal occasions when parents were allowed to visit, we wore long grey socks with the school colours at the top, a striped school tie, a grey felt hat with a ribbon band around it in the school colours and a green blazer with the school badge on the left upper outer pocket. If we had school colours these were denoted by a silver star on a circular felt patch about the size of an old ha'pence, the colour of which denoted a sport or activity, sown on to the hat band. The boys who excelled at sport (not me!) had quite a number of these which made quite a show.

Scouting

We also had cubs and scouts at the school which nearly every boy joined. The uniforms were typical, except that we still retained the traditional brown felt hat, pinched into a point, as worn by Baden Powell himself (see attachment C).

School Holidays

In the school holidays my clothes did not change that much. Instead of grey cotton drill shorts, they tended to be either dark blue or khaki. Generally I wore a tee shirt or plain cotton short-sleeve shirt. My short socks were brown or white, if I was not wearing my school ones. Generally I wore the same Clarks sandals as I did at school. Except when it was wet when I wore gumboots and, once that decision had been made, I wore them all day long. Outside we were ordered to wear wide-brimmed straw hats. Generally if I was going out and needed to look smart I wore my school uniform. Parents had it very easy then! When I was about eleven I given a brown tweedy suit, which had short trousers. Apart from a pair of chocolate brown corduroy trousers I cannot remember ever having long trousers.

My World Turned on Its Head

Within a month of the start of the school year when I was going to take my common entrance exam and approaching my 12th birthday, my world was turned on its head. My father’s business failed and he committed suicide, leaving my mother destitute. I remember the day vididly when I was ushered out of the form room by the headmaster to be told and then sent home. I fully expected to return to the form after a few days, when the funeral was over. But that was not to be. I never saw the school or any of my friends from there again.

Back to England

British Colonies had a policy of ensuring there were no indigent white people. I suppose it "let the show down". So either through a payment from the government or by charitable donation, we were booked a second class passage back to Southampton and there by train to the North of England, where my mother’s parents lived. My mother had come from very humble origins and so had my father; it was just that he had had the ambition to escape. My mother was in a state of nervous collapse and never fully regained her health so for the most part I was brought up by my grandparents with whom we lived.

Northern England

The contrast of the world that I had newly entered could not have been greater from the one I had just left. From a rambling colonial home with large grounds and a fleet of servants I found myself in a small back room in a small red brick terraced council house with no garden, just a yard, and an outside privy. I now had to get used to public transport, having never taken it in my life. I had not even washed up after a meal. Gone were the clear sunny skies. They were replaced by grey, cold and drizzle. I had never experienced short winter days before and this added to the gloom, particularly after my mother was confined in a nursing home shortly after our arrival.

New School

Instead of the prospect of a major public school I was within a few days of arrival enrolled to start the Easter term at the local high school: a secondary modern.

My Secondary Modern

People may mourn the passing of most grammar schools but I do not think anyone mourned the phasing out of secondary moderns and their replacement by comprehensive schools starting in the late-60s. I was shown around it and it seemed a completely foreign, hostile place. It just heightened my sense of gloom. I do not know whether a grammar school was ever considered. It was never discussed with me and I think, in any event, I had missed the age range in which it is possible to take the eleven plus. As life-long Labour Party supporters my grandparents did not approve of private or selective education in any event so probably no alternative to the local school was ever sought.

School clothes

In the intervening period between arriving in England, probably around mid-November, and the start of the term in January I was kitted out for my new school. There was no school uniform as such so my grandmother invented one of sorts: back blazer, grey long trousers, grey socks, grey or white shirts and a blue or grey jersey, both long and short sleeved. At the time at other schools some of the younger boys wore shorts but this was not the case in my school. For me though long trousers were quite a novelty. The shoes were the brown ones I had had from my previous school. I also acquired a grey duffle coat with wooden toggles, rather than the more expensive horn. It was a hand-me-down from one of my grandparent’s friends. At my previous school every item of my clothing had my name in Cash’s woven name tapes sown in (see attachment D). Now with the exception of my duffle coat and PE kit, being white elasticised shorts, white tee shirt and plimsolls or “daps” (see attachment E) which were marked with my name or initials written in indelible ink, nothing else needed to be labelled as it was either washed at home or not kept in a locker room at school. It was also during this time that my glasses were replaced with NHS issue. The round ones with curly wire ear pieces which I have described elsewhere and hated with a passion. So in early January this rather nerdy slightly built bespectacled boy with a plumy accent was left to fend for himself at his new school. It did not go well but it was a very potent encouragement to conform rapidly to my new surroundings, which I did within weeks, By the end of my first term there was hardly a trace of the colonial prep schoolboy left and by the end of the summer even that had gone. I did not discuss my clothing with my mother or grandparents. There was little point. What I wore was imposed on me. I was not given pocket money, which was seen as an unnecessary extravagance in a very thrifty and frugal home. I used to earn money doing odd jobs and the like but it was never enough to outfit myself so I had to take what was there. While there were some boys with trendier clothes, there were many who were like me where hard wear and economy counted most and we just accepted it. One thing that was a real immprovement were football boots. In Africa we had really old fashioned leather boots which reached your ankles and had leather studs nailed into the sole. Often these nails would work their way up blistering your feet. In England the football boots I had had a moulded rubber sole so the studs were simply part of the sole, which was far better as there was no risk of losing a stud and they were much more comfortable (see attachment D). The only problem was the studs did wear down if you walked on a hard surface with them but it was a small price to pay for someone who was fairly useless at games in any event.

Progressing through the school

As I progressed through the school my so called uniform remained roughly unchanged with minor variations about a theme. It was during this time that I was fitted with Tuf shoes, a brand I continued to wear through to college, as described elsewhere. The sixties and early seventies was a period when consumers really embraced new fabrics and materials: no more so than in school uniforms. Somehow there was an optimism that man-made fabrics and materials were an improvement. So while the garments were roughly the same, the materials with which they were made had changed. Trousers were terylene or polyester, socks were nylon, as were many shirts, jerseys were made in orlon and other artificial fabrics or mixtures. Everything seemed now to be drip dry. For example, my first school trousers must have been a worsted wool or wool mix. They needed dry cleaning. This later changed to polyester (I think) with a crease that was permanent and a plastic belt that went with the trousers. Wearing a tie was a rarity but I must have had one for best. Again this must have been out of polyester which to the ignorant eye looked like silk but with the added advantage of being able to be washed. An item of clothing that was completely new to me was the vest. In Africa I wore underpants which were "Y" front briefs. Their replacements were more like shorts and were called "keks". The vest was convenional enough until the string vest was made popular, when my replacements were all string vests. Their popularity was accounted for by their warmth in winter and coolth in summer, allowing for continuous comfortable wear. I do not think this was strickly true. Instead it had the disadvantage of being able to be seen faintly beneath a shirt so it was obvious what you were wearing underneath it. Half way through my time at school I acquired my first anorak. It replaced the duffle coat which I had outgrown but not worn out. At that time the garment was called an anorak, even though now it would be called a parka as an anorak is generally taken to mean a light-weight hooded waterproof jacket. The schoolboy anorak of the sixties was a nylon padded jacket with a hood. My first one had a hood that was integral to the garment. It was blue; they nearly all were blue, quilted with side pockets with a front which zipped closed and cords around the hem and the hood so they could be tightened to keep out the weather. It had long sleeves with elasticised cuffs. It was an amazingly practical garment which was both warm and waterproof. Except in the summer when I only wore it on occasions, I wore it all year round. Other than a blazer I do not think I had another jacket or coat. If I had I have forgotten it. I certainly did not have a suit. In fact I did not have one until after I had left college when I needed one for work. My first suit came from Burtons but that is another story. As my anorak was seldom, if ever, washed it gradually became an old friend as the marks of sweaty hands and the abrasions of school life became more obvious and the stitching of the quilting started to unravel. When the first was eventually discarded it was replaced with a very similar blue one, except it had a burgundy coloured nylon lining in the body of the garment and the hood and a hood that was detachable. I never saw the point of this as it was never unzipped from the body of the garment. I suppose boys like me wearing anoraks cut a singular figure at the time, particularly if they had some obsessive but unfashionable pursuit such as train spotting. The look was quintessentially nerdy which is why the word “anorak” or “trainspotter” is used to describe such a person. Even today the term has not lost its currency. Those who are obsessing about the hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic are referred to as “titanoraks”.

Scouting

Unsurprisingly there were no Boy Scouts at my school. We did go camping once or twice but wore the same clothes as we did at school.

School Holidays

The clothes I wore for school remained unchanged for quite a time so I have a reasonably accurate memory of them. What I wore in the school holidays is a less vivid memory. For the most part I wore items of my school uniform, the trousers particularly, and my school shoes. But there were other garments. Cavalry twill trousers in a synthetic fabric with a plastic belt I seem to remember, and shirts long sleeved and short which were patterned, generally with stripes or checks. Jerseys also had greater variety in colour. I also remember having knitted for me fair isle sweaters with both long and short sleeves (see attachment E). Apart from the trusty anorak I also had, like everybody else, a plastic mac. It was grey in colour with plastic buttons moulded on and bought from the local branch of F. W. Woolworth (“Woolies”). They came in a similarly coloured plastic pouch once I had taken it out I never seemed to be able to fold it small enough to get back it. In the summer school shoes were rested and I wore brown leather sandals, fastened with a strap which buckled on the side and with a buckle over the base of the toes so the width could adjusted (see attachment F). I wore these with socks…of course. It was considered rather avante garde not to. We used to have a summer seaside holiday which was invariably at Skegness. In fact we went to the same bed and breakfast again and again. There was times when it was wet and windswept (a far cry from the Indian Ocean) so there was no real point to holiday clothes, so I just wore what I always wore. There were sunny times as well. I am sure I had shorts and bathing trunks but I have forgotten what they looked like. I remember at the seaside but no where else I used to wear plastic sandals (see attachment G). At the time poorer younger children often wore plastic sandals to school. Mine were brown in colour and came from the ever reliable Woolies.

Final Thoughts

So those are my memories. It is difficult to imagine that at the same time Carnaby Street was revolutionising the teenage fashion. Maybe, but not in my home.