Burnley Grammar School

In school from 1986-89 shirts came off near constantly in PE during gym time, and sometimes for outdoor games. But officially for my secondary there is not the slightest suggestion that any physical education was done in bare chests or that anyone would ask us to do that, but turning up it was quite a different matter altogether. I've gone through everything I kept about my school and everything it says about school uniforms, school PE uniforms, the lot of it. They don't even mention the showers we had, there's a couple of words that just say 'towel required' leaving the reader to deduce the reason for that. It's almost as though it was a dirty little secret not to shout about!

I may be wrong, but I believe that the boys are sitting on a "Pommel Horse" and the vaulter is on a "Box".

Brian, I saw your message late last night and did not follow your advice, are you a teacher? While we do have a non-negotiable all encompassing full showering mandate and we do a bare chest sanction to those who do not bring the correct top into PE, I'd have no great enthusiasm to go further than that like you suggest. Our rules work well and are effective and just once in a while we relax them a little and suggest a bare chest option purely in terms of heat comfort for anyone who would like to. I think we cover all bases quite sensibly in that regard.

I like working with those I'm in charge of, not against them.

First time post, fab discussion. I've been reading page after page of these memories over the week since I found this here.

One thing though, what do people here call each of those two pieces of gym equipment, the one the boy is doing a handstand on with the teacher, and also the one to the right with legs that the boys are sitting on. I ask because I have a feeling I may have been using the wrong name for a lifetime for at least one of them.

I think many of us when we went to our upper schools at eleven or twelve felt a little overwhelmed and insecure and possibly quite powerless, feeling a need to simply comply with everything and anything, and to use a PE style phrase, we were expected to hit the ground running on arrival.

I'd class myself as nothing more than an average boy, with average ability, with average looks and an average body to match, at a mid range average middle England comprehensive school of the very late sixties and mainly seventies, there from autumn 69 to summer 75. I hope and think that I've been a better than average adult though in my post school lifetime these last fifty years.

Someone once asked me in a job interview what teachers had inspired me at school and I really struggled with that one to come up with a fitting answer. I remember a PE teacher popping into my mind in that moment and opted to use him as my inspiration, but not in the way they expected. I was being interviewed at a book publishing company by a man and woman. I told them he'd inspired me because he'd made me do things as a boy that I would never have done otherwise. One of these things was about being more of a team player, believing in my own ability as an individual, realising I was better at some things than I thought I was, endurance running for one, aka the cross country, and allowing me to become comfortable in my own skin which I'd only done because this man and his PE colleagues made me do my PE in ways that initially I really wasn't keen at all on, going shirtless around others. But I have to admit to myself that it was the being made to do it that helped out, and with that I include the showering mandate too. Some people, and I have to say I was clearly one of them, do actually respond well to such rules being imposed even when uncomfortable at first.

It might seem a little odd to some on here to read me saying I was inspired by a teacher, and others, who told me I had to be shirtless for gym and then naked for showers at school but it worked to demystify my own and others physical attributes. This, along with developing my team player skills and other strengths.

Don't get me wrong, I can cite as many less great points as anyone else, we had a PE teacher who I disliked because he only ever criticised and hardly ever praised. I saw that as his failing, not mine though. You can never please some people in this life and shouldn't keep trying to. Another lesson learned early on.

I got the book job and the interviewers seemed to really like my school teacher inspiration explanation. Without the PE teacher I'd have been stumped to find another teacher to call even remotely inspiring, they were all just doing their day jobs to me, many looking bored sometimes. The PE teachers at least never looked bored.

The chatter on double standards is a fab one too. An early one of mine goes back to being six years old in a painting class. What a horrible paint bullying story a day or two ago that was by the way. I don't know what kind of paint it was, except it was very messy and came in many colours. There were large bits of paper over the floor of the classroom and we had to do hand and foot painting, or rather the boys did. The girls were doing hand painting only but all the boys had to take shoes and socks off and dip bare feet into trays of paint and walk onto the paper, as well as do hands. The girls didn't have to. Even at the age of six I thought what a stupid silly thing to make us do. The resulting pictures just a mess. To do this on our hands and to keep our school shirt clean the boys had to do this with top removed, the girls did not. Once that was done we had to sit on a side unit and stick our feet in a sink under running water while our teacher made sure our feet were properly clean again, I even remember her touching me and checking between my toes for left over paint that I'd missed, while looking down at the paper on the floor with various girls hand prints and boys footprints everywhere. Then it was all screwed up and thrown away at the end of the day.

Boys are expected to get messy and not care but some boys aren't up for all that, while some girls would love to get stuck into it. Just so stereotypical of the genders right from age six.

I'm full of opinions and stories of school but won't overdo it.

The older boys at the Queensbury Academy here in Bedfordshire have been going out group running from that place again late this morning in their usual sized group of about twenty I've seen before and this time the whole lot of them were bare chested, I didn't spot one with a top today, whereas when I've seen them a couple of times before on my drive past there have been four or five with tops on, not today though. They went off into their usual running track off road near the school which is quite private and leafy after you leave the quite busy road they have to go along first to get there. I was out of the van walking to deliver some flowers and they were the opposite side of the road to me and looked quite focussed on themselves and nobody else. I doubt any of them were being made to run that way, it just gives the impression of being their own choice but I could be wrong. An older guy was running with them in shorts and T-shirt, one of the gym teachers I should imagine.

Whatever you think of it, there is definitely something that looks more impressive when you see a group running in their bare chests like that as opposed to a random collection of tops they threw on with sweat stains back and front. It sort of looks business like and gives off a disciplined sense of the whole group to me, and the weather is great so why not. A couple of years ago I saw something similar and it was the opposite time of the year to now and a lot less warm.

Comment by: Brian on 1st May 2025 at 19:36



"Neal how about you tell them all to remove tops and conduct PE barechested tomorrow instead, and see what the reaction is to that. You should use this opportunity just to try out standardised shirtless PE lessons for once. I support you allowing them to do PE shirtless, and why not, now you should just drag the other third along to the concept of the proper barechested PE lesson that you have decided they will do and get the whole lot doing so.........."

WHY???

I always find comments like that a little bit concerning.

Comment by: Andrew K on 1st May 2025 at 12:33
Mike F having always played football as skins vs vests at school i think it was a good idea on your teacher's part to switch teams at halftime and have everyone go barechested at some point. Our teachers never chose to do that.Once your vest came off that was it. Little wonder the girls thought we were mad.




Why did they think that Andrew. I concur with you though, if we took our stuff off it stayed off for the duration.

I've actually played shirts versus skins tops against a team of girls who were the shirts at school a couple of times. 43 year ago this month to be precise - May 1982. We rarely mingled outside for PE and just did our own things away from each other with our respective teachers.

One games lesson a lot of boys got chosen and pushed into doing a game of field hockey against the girls. We were already outside and some boys were shirtless and others not, common practice when we were doing athletics which we began after Easter going into summer.

A number of boys picked to play the girls at hockey were already shirtless so those others who were not had to take our tops off to make up the team "colours". There were about 10 or 12 of us, we played the girls and lost, they always played hockey, we rarely did.

Someone on our side asked for a rematch and we were promised we could have one next week again with the exact same boys team. When we came to it the next week we were all outside in tops and the girls acted all disappointed we weren't skins like last week, kind of jokingly. They'd obviously enjoyed playing a bunch of bare chested boys and it was certainly a novelty for all of us. The girls teacher was nearby and decided it was up to the boys what we did, and the usual suspects who went skins any excuse in PE got their tops off kind of showing off a bit in front of girls and that made the rest of us feel we had no choice but to do the same as they were not intending to put them back on again. I remember a few girl 'come on, come on' comments to those who were dragging their feet about taking their tops off but we all did it and played them a second time, losing yet again. We never played them again. I was not into hockey for boys anyway. Their teacher watched us play and seemed enthusiastic about us playing them as skins. Our own male teacher who had chosen who was going to peel off to play the girls the previous week was with the others boys doing their more usual things.

Now it's always presumed that only men wolf whistle at women or girls but this is just not true. I remember some of the girls clearly wolf whistling at us boys aiming for reactions on both occasions we faced them as skins for field hockey against them. Half our boys team felt pressured into it. There were a couple of girls on their side who fancied boys on our side, one liked me a lot, and they were clearly over the moon to get a chance to play boys like us without our shirts on for a bit, and we were fifteen year olds at the time.

I had no problem taking things off in front of boys, but taking things off in front of girls like that, especially some you know might like you a lot, made me feel very sheepish.

After PE everyone, boys and girls went for showers. You could easily hear the girls in their showers from our changing rooms not far away, and in their area there was a thin frosted window often open a couple of inches. We sometimes wondered if the showers were beside that window but it was impossible to see in even with it open a couple of inches, the angle to look in was just not there. I used to think about what it might be like if they suddenly made us all share and I think I had a dream about it.

Comment by: Greg2 on 1st May 2025 at 11:51

I quite like Scandanavian and European cinema and a lot gets shown on Saturday nights on BBC Four, often subtitled. I think the one being talked about is Swedish maybe? They are so easy going on all things showers and taking clothes off it's unreal at times. I bet most school still showers over there.

Here's a good example from a nine parter called Skaidi, this was shown on BBC Four a few years ago now, it looks a lot more recent than it is, I think it's from the 90s. It's very nicely made. In it from 8 minutes there is the almost must have full on shower scene that many of these dramas from there seem to stick in. But the great bit about this if you watch from 8 minutes is the part at 8 minutes 21 seconds and you notice these boys are so relaxed they are even having a communal shower with each other with the door wide open out onto the corridor for anyone to look in on, as one of their mates fully clothed is, who then starts a fight, sound familiar Greg! Here in the UK we boys would all definitely have closed that door!

https://tv.nrk.no/serie/skaidi/sesong/1/episode/FBUB10000994

The NRK website is quite good and you can watch a lot of Scandanavian Norweigen programming on it without a login which is unusual. There is also a similar historical films archive site with a similar name with content going back over 80 years.

Comment by: Matt C on 1st May 2025 at 02:44

I'm genuinely unsure what to think about your prefect age difference with you. If you're a twelve year old with a seventeen year old in school, is that really so bad to share if you are all genuine school pupils at the same place doing the same thing. If I had been a sixth form prefect, I never was, I'd not have chosen to do that myself. It just shows that everyone's comfort level is different.

I loved the 'I suppose these are no longer our private parts' comment. That is the kind of thinking that could only come out of the mouth of children.

Looking at the peeping girls film, I know they are actors and it was fiction but nudity is nudity and it reminded me of the real life one from schools TV, I was surprised to see a sudden close up as the camera lowered down on one of them, but this must have been trying to convey the girls eyes from the viewer perspective. I agree it is quite brave for child actors to do things like that knowing they will always be available, and that film wasn't even that old was it.

The closest example in reverse I can think of is only with adult men peeping at women in Porky's from the eighties, done for comedy value, and the joke ends up being on the males anyway when one of them pokes his appendage through the peep hole and one of the girls grabs it and won't let go!

There are not many of us, male or female, who wouldn't peep if we knew there was a group of our friends of the opposite sex taking a naked shower and we could watch incognito. Maybe Alan wouldn't but the rest of us would and don't lie and say no.

Greg I really find your own thoughts on being peeped at and then what happened afterwards all quite compelling. You sound like a nice guy and I'm sorry you lost the fight. Did your good looks match up with a good physique? Maybe there was a lot of jealousy over you.

You'd always see these lads in PE when we did skins against shirts who were absolutely desperate not to get picked to be the skin, so they didn't have to pull the school vest off and bare their chests to do things like basketball. These were often the very same boys who made regular attempts or made excuses not to shower or not to even do PE at all.

My PE teachers weren't ones for listening to excuses not to do things when told. Someone on here made the point, what if you refused to take a top off, what could they do. Well I can answer that because I saw my own PE teacher tell someone to raise his arms above his head a pull his vest off him once in PE when he was told to be a skin and wanted to be a shirt.

Changing room towel dancing was for soft lads and completely self defeating anyway. We did have towel flicking moments sometimes at each other and then one day someone got their towel thrown in the shower and soaked through. This is when we discovered that a wet towel when flicked at a bare backside can really hurt a lot more than a dry one.

I never shared the shower with a PE teacher but when I went on a week long field trip to Cornwall in 1979 we shared a dormitory in a lodge near Padstow 14 boys and two teachers, and in the morning we moved along the landing together wrapped in towels and found ourselves all naked with our two geography teachers on a number of mornings before we set off for the days trekking. We thought it was amusing but we didn't think it was wrong.

Neal how about you tell them all to remove tops and conduct PE barechested tomorrow instead, and see what the reaction is to that. You should use this opportunity just to try out standardised shirtless PE lessons for once. I support you allowing them to do PE shirtless, and why not, now you should just drag the other third along to the concept of the proper barechested PE lesson that you have decided they will do and get the whole lot doing so. You obviously thought it was a good day to do shirtless PE so why not just tell them all to do it and be done with it.

It's good to see you make them all shower at least. It's no hardship to make any of them do that, or barechested PE. These should be the very basics of any PE.

The calibre of the posts on here at the moment is exceptional, I'm sure others must agree with me.

It's been good to have some public schoolboys on here and boarders, alongside us common old state school urchins, as well as the female input and some renewed teacher input.

Matt C - 'As some joker once memorably shouted aloud in our school changing room when we first showered - "I suppose these are no longer our private parts". This was in our first term secondary school showers, perfect timing and observation out the mouth of a fellow twelve year old, and it even managed to make our quite hard faced PE teacher laugh out loud along with some of us.'

Matt, this comment made me smile, what a great kid to come up with that one liner, I wish I'd done that in my time, that's a beauty, very funny indeed.

Comment by: Andrew K on 1st May 2025 at 12:33
Mike F having always played football as skins vs vests at school i think it was a good idea on your teacher's part to switch teams at halftime and have everyone go barechested at some point. Our teachers never chose to do that.Once your vest came off that was it. Little wonder the girls thought we were mad.




Yes, whenever I did things like this there was never any switching halfway through, you tended to stay the way you were chosen, so if you didn't like being shirtless, tough luck. Knowing the teachers I had they'd have considered any shirt switching to be faffing around wasting precious lesson time.

But I'm one of those here who did lots of generalised shirtless PE anyway, turned out the same, and your girls comment is perceptive. I know some girls at our school found it highly amusing to see us doing PE so much without our shirts. Not just the once in a while class share, but we had to walk past classroom windows with our tops off back to change so got seen that way too. If you were sitting in the maths block at any level from the ground to second floor you could see the boys coming or going to PE in either the school gym or out on the field. With all our clothes, bags and valuables in the changing room they locked the door when we went out so we'd frequently be loitering waiting for the door to be unlocked to get back in, and a lot of that loitering was shirtless, giving the maths block an eyeful, so any girls at the time (or boys I suppose) who liked what we looked like or saw someone they fancied got a bit of a show if they dared gaze out the window without being noticed.

As my school day ends, a follow up to my only other comment I left here in February.

Our school gym was very hot today and we offered the chance to any boys who wished to do so to remove the top if they desired in all the lessons throughout the day there. The same applied yesterday. Up to two thirds of the boys chose to do this and take part bare chested, between 15 and 20 in our class sizes of 30. This was a discretionary decision however due to the unseasonable heat as a lot of pupils had been complaining. It will apply tomorrow also.

Normally if someone has not come to PE with the correct kit top the sanction is a bare chest.

We are a school that requires showers are taken after PE and on days such as today I am pleased that is the case because they are very much needed after vigorous exertion and some do sweat a lot more than others noticeably so and have a lesser or higher heat tolerance during activity.

Much like Mike F has noted from his time, we had a similar type of set up doing football at school as well, mid to late 70s, there was a north and south school with different PE tops but the north and the south school never interacted with lessons, even PE, other than sports day for the whole place. So much like Mike the whole PE group in my north school wore the same exact top, and for some reason the concept of a bib or sash did not register, perhaps on purpose because this allowed the excuse, if that's what it was, to do skins with boys, which is the way we went too, just like Mike, and in all weathers. Unlike Mike however, who seems to have had quite fair minded PE teachers there, we didn't play it different by halves. If you were chosen to be a skin for PE that day then you remained a skin for the entire time outside. Not only that but you could quite easily find yourself being a skin the very next time we did it too for the whole lesson, whilst you had to look on and know other boys were shirts possibly two, three or four lessons on the trot. All I know is that I felt more a skin than a shirt in those games, but everyone seems to say that don't they.

We also had to run the cross country without our shirts on unless the weather was very bad indeed. We were always running shirtless cross country on what I would describe as normal benign unremarkable kinds of autumnal and winter days. It wasn't as bad as it sounds actually once you got moving and used to it but not everyone saw it that way. I was getting stuck into that kind of set up for PE from the word go at 12 in 1974. That autumn for me was a real learning experience and introduction to much tougher PE, and making whole classes of reluctant boys march nude into cool water communal showers that went with it.

What fascinates me about being a secondary schoolboy in the 70s is why the PE teachers I had were so determined to throw us all outside stripped to the waist in some often less than favourable conditions to be shirtless in. Why was it seen as something that boys like me should leave the warmth of the changing room and get out into the cold without shirts on to run for much of the next hour or so, or kick a ball about outside without my top on, and if I had to do that why didn't any teachers follow suit?

In team games, especially the outside ones, how come the only method that was used to identify a team had to be the skins method, even playing football in the cold? Does anyone really know the answer to this? We all seem to be guessing!

I wasn't dreadfully shy to take my top off, but there's a time and place for everything.

Inside in the school gym nobody would think to question the near permanence of shirtless PE we did but when you're going outside and you're 14 running a December 1976 cross country a couple of weeks before Christmas last lesson of the day and it's already sunset before 4pm, our school day finish, and the light is fading rapidly and we are all finally running back into school, no shirts on, sweaty, but pretty damned cold too with it, panting for breath and knackered, it was akin to an SAS training run at times not the local state secondary with a set of averagely fit boys.

One takeaway from such lessons as I've described is a sense that the PE teachers were never satisfied with us and there was always something for someone to be pulled up over even if we had given it everything we had.

The only thing I will say about all this is that I am sure we were all much fitter boys in those days.

Mike F having always played football as skins vs vests at school i think it was a good idea on your teacher's part to switch teams at halftime and have everyone go barechested at some point. Our teachers never chose to do that.Once your vest came off that was it. Little wonder the girls thought we were mad

Matt C on 1st May 2025 at 02:44

No I don’t think they were 13 either, but I think what I was meaning was that 13 is bang in the middle of change for boys, so some could still look 11 while others might appear 15 at that age. I was right in the middle for that age really. The annoying girls did seem surprised to discover these boy secrets which just fuelled their teasing.

I’m glad I wasn’t made to have primary school showers, but at that young age, just like you I expect, I suppose I would have just conformed as it’s surprising when so young how quickly we can all become so accepting; or is it institutionalised? But you’re right in that secondary school showers were just about getting through it, as our gym teacher was ever present and would have exploded if we’d messed about during those younger years. When I was 12/13 I had a few showers on a camping sites where I’d find myself in there with my younger brother, or at other times with friends. We certainly played about more in there at those ages.

A towel dance is pretty pointless if you’re all in there together a few seconds later. As much as I didn’t like school showers, another aspect I never quite understood that’s been mentioned is walking to and from the shower with your towel around your waist. How could that work anyway? Where do you put them when you’re in there, and collect them from again on the way out. You have to dry yourself anyway then when back at your place. Unless some schools had a completely different system?

"I suppose these are no longer our private parts". Brilliant! What a great quip, and so observationally true for that young lad to come out with that as he experienced that new odd and strange feeling that we all had to go through. What instant natural humour your classmate had. I hope his new gym teacher immediately gave him a House Point for that!

Hi Greg2,

One last detail I forgot to put in my last post.

The fact that the girls kept up the taunting for weeks indicates that your suspicion was right and they continued their spying on a regular basis. No sore bums for them and not even a detention, it seems. But boys must be beaten and made to conform.

I don't think the boys in Karl's associated film link being spied on by girls while they were in the showers are 13 year olds, they look more like primary age 10's or 11's to me at most. My first school shower was in a primary school in 1981 at the age of 10 (a newly built changing block) and seemed very similar to that shown scene from the film. We used to get into trouble for too much messing about and not enough doing what we were in there for, to wash ourselves rather than treat it as a skinny dipping water feature. No girls spied on us, that I know of!

A couple of years later secondary school showers had a very different feel to them, very little messing in them and just got on with it more seriously.

Both school made us shower even if we didn't wish to do so, at secondary they left us in no doubt that going in the showers was not optional but necessary and required by all.

The towel dance has been mentioned. I don't know why anyone would waste their time with that if your headed for the showers hanging it all out shoulder to shoulder with your class mates. You'd have definitely been ridiculed by someone if you'd played those games in our secondary school when changing out of your pants.

As some joker once memorably shouted aloud in our school changing room when we first showered - "I suppose these are no longer our private parts". This was in our first term secondary school showers, perfect timing and observation out the mouth of a fellow twelve year old, and it even managed to make our quite hard faced PE teacher laugh out loud along with some of us.

When I was a twelve year old fresh face at secondary school one of the upper sixth form prefect used to be a part of our lesson sort of teaching some of us away from our actual PE teacher. I think he was 18 or very close, but to me looked 20 at least. I don't know what that was all about, but he was an arrogant so and so to us out of sight of the actual teacher who had him join in with us. When he took part he even walked into the showers with us even though it wasn't obligatory for sixth former to do that. He stood next to me one day and it was hard to believe he was actually a schoolboy like me, he was, I'd seen him in sixth form uniform. He caught me looking at him, to me what looked like a fully adult body, which it more or less was I suppose. Catching my eye as I took a sideways glance at him he smiled, lifted his eyebrows and simply said to me - "One day", which I presumed to mean he was saying I'd soon enough one day look like him. I wasn't keen on a sixth former, possibly six years older than me at the time, sharing with us, it felt an imposition.

Hi Greg2,

It's plain from the cut in that clip to the three girls walking out of school with their arms about each other that there were no consequences for their prying!

It must have compounded how you felt being taunted by those girls that you had all ended up with bruised bums for doing the exact same thing they did. That woman PE teacher you mentioned was a disgrace to her profession, quite frankly. But it was a very different culture in the sixties and seventies and boys weren't supposed to have feelings, and if they did have feelings they were to be taught to disregard them, and so that sort of casual disregard for boys was all too common. But it was disgusting that the girls were allowed to take that liberty.

Over the recent Easter weekend I caught up with my sister. The conversation turned at one point to the lack of school punishments nowadays. My sister was in favour or bringing back CP and I found myself telling her about my own experiences for the first time ever in forty-whatever years. She was astonished to hear that I was ever hit at school at all, given how shy and conformist I always was, although she herself was in the same teacher's class a few years later and confirmed that she remembered this teacher slapping the boys about. In turn I was very surprised to hear that my little sister, who I remember as always popular and having loads of friends, had struggled to fit in and been dropped en masse by her whole clique at twelve. Fuck them. I was even more astonished to learn that our other sister, who has a truly intimidating temper nowadays, had been badly bullied in her schooldays.

'It’s quite telling that the girls laughed but not so much the boys. Girls can be really horrible at times, as they were with us boys following the shower moment.'

Girls seemed to have a killer instinct for humiliation. I can think of two anecdotes from my own schooldays, one involving boys and the other girls, which I might post some other time but the last time I posted about one of them my comment was moderated so maybe not.

What I can say is, girls always had a certain level of privilege. They always knew they were safe. When formal CP was a thing in UK schools it was 95% of the time boys suffering it, quite often for the same things that girls would get a more lenient sanction for. Well, as you found out. They had more liberty to be horrible because they knew any consequences would be less. I have posted before of being an over-sensitive an anxious child who wanted to fit in. But I still ended up walking back to my seat with a stinging arse because my teacher, who our 'good catholic' headmaster refused to discipline, had lost his rag yet again and having to do the walk of shame past the girls whose eyes would be aglow with triumphant contempt.

I got used to the shorts eventually. But it was always cutting that boys were held rigidly to that rule while the girls weren't even forced to wear skirts or dresses and were allowed long trousers, including my eldest sister who started two years after me. We would walk to school, her in her jeans and me in my shorts. I have never forgotten that.

Karl on 29th April 2025 at 03:33

Karl, I watched that clip from the film and hadn’t watched that before. I suppose most of us must have looked much the same as those boys when only 13, thought there were a couple, and one in particular, who always looked about three years ahead of most of us, appearing much more mature. For all I know the girls might have had their door slightly ajar just like that and we hadn't noticed, as boys do jump and play about a bit in there at those younger ages. But it was the tormenting that followed for weeks that we all got a bit fed up with, I know I did. I think we did give back as good as we got with some insulting firing back, but it was all childish nonsense really. But I’m sure the girls picked up on my discomfort with the detail they went into, so continued to go for me with the little finger wiggling stuff which I tried to ignore. I was actually very average for where I should have been at that age, but such barely perceivable evidence of starting to grow up wouldn’t have been detectable from that distance!

A few have mentioned bullying. It wasn’t that long after that episode that I started, quite out of the blue, to be singled out and picked on. It was always boys who weren’t in my form, so ones I didn’t know too well, though the same age group as me. I mentioned the older looking lad in the showers, well he was the first one to start. I was never one of the smaller kids, in fact I know I was exactly 5 feet tall at the age 12 as I still have an old school book where we all had our heights measured and wrote out a class list. It started with him deliberately pushing me as he walked past with others in corridors etc, which I remember surprised me the first time.This started to bother me, and had I been a submissive sort I could so easily have become one of the traditional bullied kids who suffer for it throughout their schooling, but I wasn’t like that. I was becoming annoyed with myself for letting him do that, so the next time I saw him walking towards me I’d already told myself what I must do: I pushed him right back, which I think surprised him. There was a bit of a scuffle and a teacher came out and did the usual shouting, but nothing more than that. This lad then said to meet up after school for a fight! So, I met him after school and several other kids appeared to watch. He walked up to me, kneed me in the groin, thumped me in the face a few times, and generally beat me up! He was bigger and stronger than me and I couldn’t do anything about it. I was disappointed with myself but had to accept it. The odd thing was he never bothered me again after that. He was captain of the school football team and I was a member of the team too so we had to get on somehow, but I was forever disappointed that he beat me like that.

A month or so later when I was 14, a different lad ran at me from behind in the playground. I felt someone jump on my back which caught me unawares and I fell to the ground, scraping my face on the right side, leaving marks that lasted weeks. I remember him pushing my face down as I tried to understand what was happening. At the time I didn’t have a clue why he did that and I was so worked up with emotion, that having pushed him off followed by bit of a scuffle, the bell went to go back in. I didn’t go back into school but ran out and went home as I was so emotionally worked up wondering why I was starting to be picked on. I realised this wasn’t helping so went back to meet him coming out at home time. I knew where he’d be and waited on a corner to jump him as he had me. We started fighting until my grandfather (of all people) who worked in an engineering works nearby ran and broke us up with some other men.

There were I think two more incidents with other boys who challenged me for no apparent reason. It wasn’t a particularly rough area, and usually most people were civil and friendly, but from the ages of 13 to 15 that seemed to be how things were for me, and it all seemed to start following that strange shower peeping moment.

I really was not a trouble maker at school or a bully to anyone in any way, in fact I kept myself to myself with just my own friends in my form. But for 18 months or so some boys seemed to go for me, but I always fought back if there was any trouble, which I think surprised some lads as I’m sure they expected me to be a pushover for some reason. I suppose I didn’t look like the sort to fight back, but how wrong they were!


Nigel on 29th April 2025 at 15:52

Nigel I read your post and felt so sorry for you following that incident with the paints. Had you noticed anything building up with these particular lads before this took place, or was it out of the blue so to speak? Why do you think they picked you to do that to? It’s quite telling that the girls laughed but not so much the boys. Girls can be really horrible at times, as they were with us boys following the shower moment. Was there any subsequent trouble for you following on from those boys, or any others?



Yours Truly on 30th April 2025 at 08:23

I was at junior school in the 60s and it was quite normal back then for boys to be only allowed to wear shorts at junior school, and with a mother who came from Berlin, my shorts were…short…compared to the other kids. I was ridiculed about this at times, and remember older girls singing, ‘Who wears short shorts’ which I think was a recent song, though I didn’t know of it then. One time that sticks in my memory was when I was on a week’s school trip up in Northumberland. We were staying in a Youth Hostel and one morning when a coach was waiting to take us all out for the day, as I ran on the coach all the kids started laughing at me because I was wearing for the first time a pair of black leatherette shorts which my mother had made for me (she was a skilled seamstress) especially for this trip. I must have tried them on at home and they were shorter and a little different looking than what others would wear I suppose, but I was really embarrassed about something like that for the first time, so turned and ran off the coach, keeping everyone waiting, until I reappeared wearing jeans. I was 10. I refused to wear those shorts again after that, though my younger brother inherited them 4 years later when he was the same age. It would have been into the 70s by then, by which time I think kids wore shorts of a shorter style. It seems I was just ahead of my time!

Comment by: Chris G on 30th April 2025 at 11:23

---------------------------


....."Henry, like you and Miles, I was shunted off to boarding school, in my case at the age of 15, over half a century ago. My school was not quite up to the standard of Winchester, and even now it hasn't reached the dizzy heights of the Headmasters' Conference. However, it was a pretty decent place, with about 150 pupils spanning the 11 - 18 year range, ......"

Chris, with all due respect, I think you were very lucky, especially at the age of 15 to be given the opportunity, if you so wished to keep a top on - something many of us in bog standard schools never got the option to do - especially in a boarding school, which frequently have a very austere image.

You were not forced to adhere to strict rules, which is something that myself, and Robert, a few days ago have said - that if you wanted to wear a top that should be fine, equally if you don't - that should be fine too. There should be no inflexible rules, especially for older lads.

There is far too much rigidity in education - and it seems it still pertains in schools like the one Jack currently attends. I often wonder, quite seriously, whether this po-faced doctrinaire attitudes in schools in some part contributes to the problem of what were at one time called "juvenile delinquents". I know some people would have regarded me thus when I often played truant on Wednesday afternoons when we had a whole afternoon of sports and games, I had better things to do with my time long before I hit 15.

I will never have children, but had I have done so, the last thing I would have done was send them to boarding school. It is, I know, presumptuous of me to comment on other people's circumstances, but (I know not in your case - you were very lucky), there is far too much of this sort of thing:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62j1098y8no

Post by Henry 28th April
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Henry, like you and Miles, I was shunted off to boarding school, in my case at the age of 15, over half a century ago. My school was not quite up to the standard of Winchester, and even now it hasn't reached the dizzy heights of the Headmasters' Conference. However, it was a pretty decent place, with about 150 pupils spanning the 11 - 18 year range, and I thoroughly enjoyed my three years there, and your description chimed with my own experience, in part comparable, elsewhere contrasting.

Unlike you and Miles, tops of some sort were required wear for all sporting activities, bar swimming. These were generally white round-necked T-shirts for PE and Boxing, Rugby shirts in Navy and White (for team identification) for Rugby, obviously, and full cricket whites for Cricket, unless one played Tennis as an alternative, as I did.

Coming from a school where topless PE had been the norm for a number of years, a norm that I was both accustomed to and highly in favour of, I was disappointed to be confronted with a compulsory PE tops regime. I was not alone in this, and on a number of occasions I and a number of lads who had come from other schools with similar bare-chest policies, tried to persuade the PE teacher to at least allow toplessness to be optional. But to no avail, seemingly due to the diktat of the Headmaster, who on one occasion, during his daily lunchtime announcements, actually felt it necessary to point out that "sun-bathing with shirts off is forbidden".

In contrast, the general attitude to nudity was somewhat similar to that described in your post, i.e. nobody took much notice of it, a culture shock when I first arrived but something that I soon adapted to as to do otherwise seemed rather wimpish. Changing for PE and games in communal changing rooms, one per class, and washing and showering in communal facilities, with a single "wash-block" serving the whole school, offered little opportunity for false modesty, not that any of us seemed to possess such a virtue. One took off whatever clothing one needed to take off for the task in hand, and if that task was showering, then it all came off without question. Certainly none of us ever bothered with the towel dance.

As you note, Henry, "boys will be boys", and although I was not aware of any overt, or indeed covert, homosexuality, there was a certain amount of experimentation, as boys discovered, either alone or in small select groups, what was what and how things worked.

Most boys slept in communal dormitories, in my case initially with thirty or more other boys, although I graduated to a room of my own in my final year, and here again, undue modesty had no place. At bedtime, we washed in the wash-block, proceeded to our dormitories, took off our day clothes and dressed for bed,

This was a moment I had been dreading on my first night, as my boarders' kit list had specified 3 pairs of pyjamas, and for the past couple of years, I had been a year-round bare-chested sleeper (an unintended consequence of the introduction of topless PE at school). I therefore wasn't looking forward to having to go back wearing full PJs again. But Mum insisted on equipping me as instructed.

I needn't have worried. Despite the presence of PJs on the list, I soon learned that nothing was ever said about wearing them, and there was only one rule, albeit informal, spelled out to newcomers by the dormitory prefect, and with which we all complied unquestioningly - underwear worn during the day should not be worn in bed! On my first night it was obvious that nobody in my dorm was intending to wear more than the bottoms of their PJs trousers to bed, and that most intended to wear rather less! Some did indeed put on PJ bottoms, a number changed into different underwear and a not insignificant minority just took off everything and got into bed! As a newbie on my first night, I went for what I perceived to be the largest group, and unpacked a fresh pair of Y-fronts, noting that nothing was said about wearing under that you have slept in through the following day.

As an aside, sharing a dormitory for the first time made me aware of how many teenage boys were still wearing vests year-round in that era. I had stopped a few years before changing schools, and although Vests (3) appeared on the borders' kit list, and although Mum had managed to find some of my old no longer worn ones in the cupboard, I had adamantly refused to pack them when getting my stuff ready to take with me. Looking around the dorm that first night, it became apparent that most, if not all, of those around me were wearing vests, and it was well into the subsequent summer term before more than a couple of daredevils followed my example.

1978 - 1982. Wellingborough comprehensive.

Going barechested was a given in our school gym, but the most notorious use of the no tops rules at our school for PE came when we did skins against shirts to play football on the outside school pitch. I call it a pitch politely, some parts of the year it was more like a swampy bog with ill defined lines.

Every time we played football it was done skins and shirts style, any time at all. We all wore the same colour shirt outside. When the teams were chosen one side always had to immediately remove their shirts to play skins. But our teacher didn't leave it at that, because it initially caused squabbles so what ended up happening quite soon when I was 12 was those who were shirts were lulled into a false sense of satisfaction. At half time, about 25 to 30 minutes later the boys skins team were told to grab their tops to put back on and those with shirts on told to go barechested for the second half and remainder of PE for the next half hour or so.

So every time we did football from then on it stayed skins against shirts but everyone was barechested for half that PE lesson, playing that way for one half of the game. Being a shirt for the first half gave you time to contemplate being a skin later in PE. This way we did skins against shirts and nobody could feel aggrieved they were doing it outside while others were not.

I think another reason it was done like that was to play fair on everyone, as some of those days barechested playing football were bloody freezing and we often played in driving rain and wind that way, any time of year going, almost like we were being battle hardened. You could see how cold we were on the skins teams with a look and feel at your nipples or those of others. But in fairness to our PE teacher for football at least we had all done our barechested part of the team PE, not just one side of class. We even played this way on frosty foggy mornings, and I'm prepared to call my teacher fair about it all!

In the school gym it was just a case of the barechested rule for everyone at the same time. These rules on making us schoolboys strip off to nothing, much like the use of enforced long term after PE mandatory showers taken in the buff, were quietly accepted by everyone without much pushback. This was normal weekly life at a normal everyday school not so long ago.

Hi all.

One more anecdote has surfaced from my life re the double standard.

I have said before that my school was very insistent on the principle of short trousers for boys. It wasn't a hard and fast rule, just something they liked to see and because teachers had too much autonomy in the seventies they insisted on it. I made the mistake of resisting it. This was because I found it distressing. I felt very vulnerable being separated from my mother and then being expected to do so half-naked made it a lot worse.

I made the mistake of resisting the rule. It kind of turned into a stand-off between my family and the school and so, I suppose predictably, the school decided to make a stand and make me knuckle down. Schools in the 1970s were very big on children being made to conform. I turned up at school one day in my long trousers and jumper. My headmistress was there to meet me with my class teacher, clearly with an agenda in hand. My headmistress merrily pronounced that, oh look, I was suffering from German measles and apparently the antidote to that was to be stripped, put into short trousers - which they just happened to have on hand - and a shirt which they then ,went to the trouble of rolling the sleeves of up. I was then cast out to get on with my day feeling half-naked and paralysed.

It had been building up, this issue of me and shorts and as much as I expressed my reluctance the more I was told, no, no, no, that's the right way for boys. My mother could see how distressed I felt but my parents were very conformist people and wouldn't challenge the authorities even when they could see in front of their own eyes it wasn't working.

I went in to a corner of the playground and stayed there by myself. They must have been watching me, wondering how well their lie had worked, because after some minutes this girl from my class came up. She was friendly and pretty and gentle. She had obviously been put up to do it. She showed me how to do something with a stick. She had been sent there to soothe me. She concluded her demonstration with the kind words, "I like your shorts". Obviously they had explicitly told her to say those exact words.

The thing is? What undercut anything she said? She was wearing long trousers, so jeans. Girls were allowed to wear what they pleased.

I was five years old. I couldn't defend myself.
.

Comment by: Terry on 29th April 2025 at 18:24


I have to admit. Terry. that the notion of naked P.E. seems hard to believe. Our teacher was a dirty old man of many years standing, but even he wouldn't have indulged in that sort of highly questionable behaviour - his cover would have been blown immediately. I can only think he must have attended the school I have mentioned previously (too many times, I know, so that readers are sick of me mentioning it). By coincidence that school WAS in Essex and the person(s) involved indulged themselves behind locked doors.

Yours Truly, you said 'We were allowed tops on all through our schooldays. On going up to secondary there was a long list of kit which our parents had to get for us and which always specified tops. I think I have have detailed it in an earlier post. Bare chests were never on the agenda for my lot. I don't know if being a catholic school they just had a more than usual injunction against bare flesh?. Catholic schools are weird places. I can only speculate.'


I've been led to believe the opposite of Catholic Schools in various films I've seen over the years, for both boys and girls.

Isn't it Catholic schools that went big on the whole naked swimming thing for instance, in America especially? I once read that this was commonest among such schools in particular, for whatever reason. But if you went to a Catholic school what made you give rise to that comment, other than your own experience?

I'm uncertain of your age Yours Truly but am guessing it's middle aged like many here, and on that basis I do indeed think you were unbelievably fortunate not to encounter any shirtless PE demands throughout schooldays as someone who would have found it tricky on them. I thought that was almost impossible! In your case with your views I think you won the lottery there on that.

It's worth also making clear that there must be lots out there who couldn't have cared less one way or the other about such mandates on going shirtless, but I do think the shower anxiety was far more widespread than is ever really acknowledged, but that should not surprise anyone.

Thanks for the empathy in your reply Greg, and to others who have mentioned my couple of comments here. It's nice to find a place just to put a few old thoughts out there with others who seem receptive to what I've said, and at 54 going on 55 I never thought I'd ever be mentioning such things.

School memories last a lifetime.


I liked the peeping clip in the film Karl. I hope they weren't really peeping though, because those lads weren't just acting, they really were stripped off. There was no chance any girls would get such a chance in my school. I'm always surprised to see films like that being quite so realistic. Brave boys there.

Uh-Oh, Essex Lad has returned to the jock straps, checking for pants down the shorts and naked PE.

Yellow card for you!

My P.E kit to bring on entry to secondary school in 1977 wasn't too expensive, nowadays some schools expect school branded uniform costing nearly £500 each, including branded PE kits. None of mine had any branding of school or manufacturer.

For the outside;

1 pair of knee length dark green thick socks.
1 pair of dark navy shorts.
1 green and navy shirt.
1 pair of football boots.
1 pair of Plimsolls (outside only spring/summer)
1 white and green vest (outside only spring/summer)
Plus towel for showering.

Inside;

1 pair of white shorts.
Towel for showering.


No boys were allowed to put a top on for PE in our sports hall, we always left the changing room direct for the place all shirtless. A weird one really when we all had a very usable PE vest that we wore outside in summer but it wasn't considered something we should put on in the sports hall as well and we were left in our mostly skinny skins states of dress, not universally a popular decision I seem to recall at first. They also didn't let us wear any type of trainers or plimsolls in the sports hall, because they were worried about scuff marks on the surface and also the sound of squeaking apparently had driven one PE teacher mad a few years previously! So the full traditional gym mode bare feet and bare chest it was for four years there.

What's the problem with skins PE at school, well it's got a lot to do with the age it happens and also being told to do it I think, kids don't like being told to do many things or even wear a uniform. I was largely alright with that most of the time. My personal dislike was a teacher forcing me to shower naked. I'm a man who can happily admit that as a schoolboy I found the whole issue around compulsory PE showers quite anxiety triggering for a long time. For some it can be incredibly daunting and almost intimidating to crowd into a small area with 30 or more others even if you know them all, and I reckon we didn't even need to take three quarters of all the showers we had to in school. One of our teachers always had his head peering in at us, eyes lowered. They thought we didn't notice, but we did.