Burnley Grammar School

For Graham who asked about school reunions.

Well three years ago I went to a school get together for those of us in our leaver year of 1979 aged sixteen. It was well advertised on various social media and I didn't hesitate deciding to go along to my old school in Hampshire and had high hopes about who I might bump into again with a decent sized collection of people I was keen to see again and find out about.

Alas I can only admit to it being one of the most disappointing evenings out in my entire life.

Almost nobody I liked much or wanted to meet showed up. It was full of many people that I barely knew, never interacted much with, didn't like or couldn't abide back at school who I didn't care if I never saw again. It turned into quite an uncomfortable experience. This one chap was there who spent a couple of years giving me a really hard time with a degree of bullying, sometimes minor physical assaulting like kicks up the backside and belittling or damaging stuff of mine in petty minded ways that he found deeply amusing. A lone bully with no gang of lackeys behind him. I have no idea why he did it as I had plenty of good friends and wasn't a loner, nerdy, insecure or anything like that. But I never smacked him back and always tried to just walk away, a regret in retrospect.

This bully came up to me all pals act, now a man of 56. I could scarcely recognise him easily. To cut things short what followed almost immediatly was him mentioning to me the way he used to behave towards me in school. I didn't bring it up first, he did. So he must have known what he did was wrong and remembered well. But the real sickener for me was all the self justification and delusion as I had to stand there and listen to it all from this toe-rag, making out he never meant any of it really and that he quite liked me and that it was all just schooldays fun and mucking about. I'm sure this fella now in his fifties thought he could just stand there and clear his conscience by saying a few words and I'd stand looking at him nodding in agreement. The brass neck and lack of self awareness never fails in some out there.

To tell you one thing about him, this was a boy at school who reckoned he liked me forty years later who on my way home from school one day as I walked across a bridge over a busy railway line decided to relieve me of my schoolbag full of everything I needed for school that day by yanking it out of my hand while my guard was down as he walked past me and throw it off the bridge to land between the rails of the track below where I couldn't retrieve it. I did get it back a day later after a call to BR and covering this bully's sorry backside with some wild excuse about how it got there. Another regret of mine.

This guy had been a menace to one or two others. Being the type he was I was surprised he'd want to come to a reunion at all. Going to a reunion and having to face a bully who then tries to whitewash years of abuse that made me worn out and unhappy by his ways was such a disappointment. Even though I tried to get an apology there was none. He hadn't done anything wrong. Much as I'd have liked to have given him a smack, damaged his property or kicked him in the backside I refrained. But I got my own back and as there is a lot of PE chatter on here I can mention this. I told him I rememebered him for him having the smallest penis in the 5th form. Obviously a school shower reference point as we all saw each other back in those days didn't we. He continued to smile like he was my best ever mate. He even offered me his number before I left, although I never took it.

Another thing from this reunion that got me was how this bully couldn't stop his beaming smile at me as if he was trying ever so hard, yet back in time his face was mostly snarling or smirking or sullen day after day. In the end his behaviour was down to jealousy. He turned out to have become a taxi driver while I became a historian and museum curator.

Hope that was of interest.

Kris. Yes there is a big difference between choice and the rules ( i.e. no choice) but back then you just conformed.
Nude swimming back then was mostly confined to junior boys but go back further into pre war times it was in the public schools through all ages like it was in american high schools up to the 60s.
More than happy to talk about the question you pose but this forum is not the place for that. Feel free though to email me.

Thanks for the answer Stuart. So I guess you quite liked the way you swam. I wouldn't have chosen to do that, well not in school anyway. But if the opportunity near a secluded stream near home had ever presented itself with my friends out of school on a nice day I might well have been daring enough to go for it. It doesn't seem so strange like that, but actual skinny dipping lessons just seems so damned odd to me and even more so if you were regimented into doing it without free will. Also because I knew I liked the same sex as myself by the age of just 13 I can only look back in absolute horrified empathy at what any young gay person may have possibly endured privately to themself in such a situation they had no control over.

I probably shouldn't bring this back up and ignore it if you want but no harm asking, did swimming like this have a any effect on you into adulthood, say with that cmnm thing that was mentioned then?

Brendan
I agree with you the thought of trousers and pants down in front of my nan horrified me more than the thought of being exposed to the doctor. As I say she did not attend and as I recall neither did anyone else's parents much to their relief.
When you were "trimmed" did you have an anaesthetic?

Referencing George here and is the school medical still a thing nowadays does anyone know or is it a thing of the past?

I'm a non identical twin and shared one with my brother once, both just in our pants with our mum looking on. We had to wait in the school corridor like it with her at the appointed time until called after getting sent from class to the changing room opposite the medical room to take our clothes off. Enjoyable is not a word I'd use to describe this eighties schooldays experience. It ended with us embarrassed by both being told we were very healthy strapping looking young men in front of our mum by our headmistress as she came sailing by when we came back out the medical room door ready to dart quickly across the corridor to the safety of the changing room and dress again. I think we were eleven or twelve at the time.

The wait outside the door for what must have been quarter of an hour seemed longer than our check up. Quite pointless and didn't even need us out of our clothes for much of it.

They may stick a covid needle into a few arms at school lately but has the full scale school medical for everyone at some point gone?

Probably yes he was Tony.

Wow Andy, were you a school bully. Who are you to be dictating terms exactly?

Oh dear.

Look to yourself when you talk of abusing people. You're doing it right here in my book. To someone who doesn't deserve it.

Kris - bearing in mind this is 50 years ago and times were very different to now, I cannot say that I was forced to do anything, but like the vast majority of 9 year old kids I did what my parents said.
Simple as that really.
I don't recall any conversations with others about it but then again this is so long ago I wouldn't necessarily remember anyway.
I do recall though that boys in the final year of the prep school ( year 8 in todays terminology) had a choice as some wore trunks in the annual house swim competition. I left the school the year before so dont know what choices my classmates made.

Gotta say ignore the haters Alan.

Telling someone on this board to - go play somewhere else - really took me back to the nastiness and worst aspects of the school courtyard when some big gobs tried to ostracise others for no good reason. We all know the type when we see, hear and read them don't we.

Respect!

Stuart, were you forced into going in the pool wearing absolutely nothing or could you have taken your swim trunks to school and worn them if you wanted to? It's quite an important distinction would you not say?

Lay off Andy, did you read Laura ten days back. Incase you didn't let me refresh you with a cut and pasted quote from her post on 10th April which I think you should digest;

'Let's have a bit of civility. I know it's hard even for some well into adulthood. This is not the school playground now and it's not great to read here and see some people singled out for groundless attacks. Based on what I came on here and read tonight I read back through many of Alan's posts this past few months and saw nothing to justify such singling out. I don't agree with Alan on some of what he says or the angle he chooses to say it but I'll absolutely defend his right to say it without having to endure personal abuse and forum intimidation which I'd guess he had during school like so many I've come across in my own job.'

Stick your cancel culture attitude away. I want to hear all opinion. Stop trying to coerce others into silence just because they may have not had the better experience you might have had. No way do I believe your interpretation of Alan's comments on here and I'm sure even he would fully agree that the vast majority of our former teachers, PE or whatever, conducted themselves perfectly appropriately. But even if just one PE teacher in a hundred or more was a wrong'un in some way then that's still rather too many that will have left a bad memory or worse on a lot of people.

I know. I was at a school with one. Ten years after I left school I got a shock when I was told by a girl I was in class with that one of my own PE teachers, a longstanding head of PE no less, had been dismissed and had appeared at Crown Court on a number of charges relating to men and boys under the age of 21 and convicted on a couple of them. You can imagine this left me playing so much back in my head just wondering about him, although I never had the slightest suspicion he was anything other than completely fine. On quite a few occasions I'd been asked to stay in the changing room for chats with him all by myself after lessons after I'd washed and dressed. Nothing untoward happened and it was mostly PE chat about the lesson and after school PE related activities as I was always keen to be on teams and do out of school extra curriculum things. But just finding that news out all that time after I left was very unsettling.

99% of PE teachers, infact anybody, are fine and upstanding. But it's conspiracies to silence others that have in the past allowed some in this tiny minority to get away with their behaviour.

Lesson over.

Kris, Alan reference to your comments about my use of the phrase 'No one cared'.
What I actually wrote is
"Our parents sent us to school with just a towel, the Headmaster showed prospective parents round whilst we were swimming. No one cared back then,"
The context is all important ,my use of the phrase no one cared referred to the adults not the kids being made to swim naked. At no point did I say or imply what the boys views were.
I have read like you many of the concerns, feelings etc from boys in the USA made to swim nude at school and the YMCAs.

With regards to how boys felt about it I can only speak from my own experience which is a period when I was aged 9 -11 (1973-76). I can honestly say at that age I couldn't have cared less but readily accept and agree that 2 years later it would have been a completely different matter.

With regards to the veracity of my contribution , all I can add is that over the years on this website many people have posted about nude swimming in schools here in the UK and in the USA. I am one of the very few that has been prepared to name the school. If more were prepared to do the same it would make it easier to test the truth of that which they write. Some credit for having done so would be appreciated.

Alan on 20th April 2022 at 12:21

Oh dear, after a few weeks of peace and some posts of innocent memories, I see you're back trying to turn everything into scenarios of potential abuse when in reality all those years ago such things almost never happened.

Please go and play somewhere else.

Kris has it absolutely right. What raised my gorge when I first come on this sitew was all the gung-ho blokes keep saying "none of us minded" or "I didn't hear any complaints". Well, of course they didn't. If they were as bombastic in boyhood as they are now, they wouldn't have heard any complaints - few lads would have made their misgivings known tolads who wouldn'thave understood, and might well have laughed at them.

Everyone is different in everything in life. For those who didnt mind that was fair enough, but no provision was made for lads who were not happy.

Unless those blokes who say "none of us minded", took part in a secret ballot held in their school, even in their form, they have no way of knowing. I suspect half dreaded it just as half didn't mind. One size doesn't fit all jn anything

George G on 20th April 2022 at 10:03

George, I don't know how I forgot that bit. Worse than anything to do with the medical check was the idea your mother might attend! We got letters at home, my mother didn't work and so had plenty of time to do things like that. Fortunately she never did but the idea of trousers and underpants down in front of the doctor was nothing compared to the idea of my mother being present.

It was bad enough when I went to be trimmed, the nurses told her all about how I was to keep clean afterwards. Fortunately, my father took all that in his stride and I had no complications so after he looked a couple of times he assured her all was fine.

I used to go swimming with my father a couple of nights each week - it was for 'lads and dads' nights so I was used to him seeing me naked as the pool had a communal changing room for men (cubicles for women!) and I saw him naked there too among many lads and dads. The pool is still there and the men still have a communal changing room and the women still have cubicles. Some things don't change.

In reply to Kris. I remember the medical inspections in our all boys school. I was there from 1962 to66
It was similar to the way you say. We stripped to the waist as we went into the room and after seeing the nurse all lines up one behind the other waiting our turn to see the doctor.. Yes we had to drop our trousers and pants and the boy behind could see that. There was no checking of foreskin only the " cough" check for hernia.

The worst thing was that about a week before we were given a letter to take home explain that there was to be a medical exam, but no details of what was to happen. A parent/guardian could attend if required. The inspections were held over a few weeks and the word got round that you would be showing everything to the doctor and I was worried in case my Nan(because my mother was dead and da d was working) would want to attend and see me naked. Fortunately she decided not to attend, and i do not remember any other parents present. these medicals took place about every couple of years.
Then when I got an office job at the Gas board I had a similar medical at their HQ, and again it was "drop em" and cough. Just to work in an office. Still as has been said we just got on with it.
Finally, I remember that although we wore minimal clothing for P e. the teacher always wore a track suit.

"No one cared back then".

Stuart, swimming with nothing on in your private school in the 70s. It's plausable, so I'll for the sake of argument take your word for it. That part wasn't the only contentious bit for me. The part that grabbed me was the bit I've quoted above that you wrote in relation to this. Because that really is the "bullshine" to use that great word someone else used here.

NO ONE CARED? They did you know, I'd swear on it.

Why is it then that it doesn't take long to find comments galore across the internet and articles from men over in the USA at schools and colleges who complain bitterly about this. Some scarred by it, others just found it weird and others simply uneasy and self conscious about it. Men who decades later are deciding to use the power of the internet to finally express their views on it even though some are really getting on in years now and are recounting things in some cases more than 60 years ago.

It's the old issue about men or boys as they once were, not talking about things or showing their true feelings. Saying nothing at the time doesn't mean they were fine and dandy with their lot. Clearly many of this particular generation from over the pond were not so why should we over here be any different in the very few places it might also have happened?

But the really big point that you never said was whether you chose to be that way in your pool lesson or were you told you had to be. That makes a massive difference to the dynamic of the whole thing. Because while I can accept what you say and what you did, what I cannot accept very easily is that in this country here in GB you or any other boys were ordered by mandate to get into the pool for lessons completely stark naked, certainly not in 1973 anyway and that 70s parents all just happened to be fine with it as well, even in private education which seems to play by different rules at times. I saw your links by the way.

TimH on 13th April 2022 at 16:18

You mention medical inspections. I don't think they happen any more but they did in the 1960s when I was at school. One in the first year, one in the third year, one in the fifth year and for those of us who stayed, one in upper sixth. The upper sixth one was a pre-university one for those of us applying and it was part of the process for applying for a grant, maybe not all education authorities required it by where I was they did.

The drill was always the same - it was a boys school.

Report to the hall where there was a nurse who checked sight and hearing then you had to join a queue to see the doctor who was in a screened off area at the side. Before going in to see him you had to take off your blazer and pullover and leave it on a chair.

Once behind the screen there would be the doc in his white coat and he called you to stand beside him and then you had to pull up your shirt and vest so it was right up under your arm pits and push your trousers and underpants down to your ankles.

He listened to your chest and heart, looked in your mouth, checked your testicles and that your foreskin retracted, mine wasn't loose enough so I was duly sent off to be trimmed. In the sixth form we also had to turn round and bend over and he inspected between our cheeks, that was a bit of a shock and I remember I blushed scarlet and I wasn't the only one seeing other lads come out after me. That was it, all over, no drama and nothing to worry about.

Mike - no that is not me. I have never discussed corporal punishment ever.

During Easter I dipped completely at random into some old pages going way back, and one was page 71 here on this thread with some comments from exactly 5 years ago in early April 2017. I don't want to sound like some kind of prosecutor cross questioning but I think it's fair to ask as people are calling Stuart out here with not unreasonable comment.

Are you the same Stuart who wrote a few of those comments at that time on that page by any chance? The same Stuart who also happened to leave a contact icon as well? The same Stuart who on that page wrote about canings and also brought full nudity with canings into it in a school gym setting?

You said you have been in touch with a couple of others on here. Which contributors and what attracted you to them specifically? Because it would be helpful to be able to look up the comments on HW of the two you elected to chat with off forum incase they were full of similar lines of thought.

Tom wasn't wrong when he said you'd revealed more than you bargained for, although it wasn't what was under your clothing but what was in your mind.

Alex Farthing: Hopefully schools today treat their pupils better, with more respect for them. Certainly I think most these days use first names rather than calling them by surname only, and I hope some of the highly questionable practices that we read about on these pages are now, definately, history.

If I am a liar then all these famous people are lying too,

John Denham ex MP: https://www.boltonschool.org/former-pupils/archives-and-memories/memories-of-school/john-denham-1949-1958/

Rick Stein: https://www.independent.co.uk/student/postgraduate/mbas-guide/an-education-in-the-life-of-rick-stein-master-chef-638439.html

David Hare, playwright: https://www.lancingcollege.co.uk/sites/default/files/inline-files/David%20Hare%20lecture%20LANCING%20AND%20AFTER.pdf

Headmaster of Bradford GS: https://www.bradfordgrammar.com/end-of-term-reflections/

and finally I will name the school I attended from 1973, - Caterham Prep School, in Surrey SEe this article from the school magazine page 15

https://www.caterhamschoolarchive.co.uk/PDFViewer/web/viewer.html?file=%2fFilename.ashx%3ftableName%3dta_publications%26columnName%3dfilename%26recordId%3d293%23page%3d16&searchText=swimming+pool#page=16

Plenty of other evidence out there:
https://brianclegg.blogspot.com/2010/07/past-is-another-country.html

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3622082/When-naked-school-swims-were-normal.html

Alan - One of my regrets in life is not feeling able to say I had any teachers in my perfectly decent school who I thought excelled themselves and that I respected fondly for how they taught me. Turning up 25 years later and discovering one of my craft teachers was every bit the same if not worse was quite sad. And for what I managed to get away with under my PE teachers is by '76-'80 standards quite impressive. To be a really successful refusnik you have to stand your ground and be quite stubborn. I didn't encourage any of my three children to be the same as me so I'm probably a hypocrite too!

Naked swim lessons in UK at 7 to11 in 1970s & 1980s, utter bullshine based on the fact it came from a poster who let slip a clothed male nude male fantasy in his contact details whether deliberately or accidentally and made sure to mention that in these swim lessons other clothed people came in on them while doing it who had nothing to do with the class. Sorry, not buying that one in your case Stuart but I'm sure you'll feel free to defend yourself vigorously here at some point.

Recent claims of naked swimming - compelled or choice? - for pupils as young as seven on here at schools in England so recent as the 1970s & 1980s just don't seem to fit well with me. That's all I'm saying.

Alex Farthing: You sound like a man after my own heart. One of the things that struck me at school, and later, was the bumptiousness of some teachers, who felt, even after you had left school, that they were still "above" you, like some important untouchable, royal figure talking to his butler.

About two years after I left school, I saw one of my old teachers on a railway station and he called me by my surname - I just gave him a look of contempt and gave him two fingers, then ignored him. To be fair, he was no worse, and even a bit better, than some of our other teachers, but yet another one who showed complete contempt and indifference to the boys he was teaching. Respect is a two way street - that is one lesson so few of them ever learned, at least back in the day. If fhey want respect they have to show respect.

Some of these people had far too high an opinion of their own importance - a bit like eldeerly politicisns, who, once they have been voted out, still are arrogant enough to think we are concerned about what they think.

How nice to read plenty new on here that isn't revolving about what got worn under lads gym shorts. That was stifling the conversation here quite clearly.

Perhaps the funniest thing I've read on here all year is Rachel on 26th March asking if boys with hairy chests were exempt from stripping off. Well I can answer that one for her and it's a clear "no". Not that I asked to be exempt, I was fine. I was one of those in the mid to late seventies who did a lot of my gym p.e bare topped and hit puberty very early on. On my 15th birthday I had no chest hair but by 16 there was a dark and noticeable sprouting across my upper chest and tummy that stood out different to most others. My birthday was early September making me one of the oldest in class. I rather liked it and my p.e teacher told me I'd been eating too many greens. People used to say eating them - "that'll put hairs on your chest". The p.e teacher in my final exam year used to take some of our p.e with his p.e vest completely off and he had no hair at all, so I think he was maybe a bit envious of this lad he had.

I can't think of any reason why having some hair on your chest should mean you have to keep it hidden. There's nothing wrong with doing p.e like that. I think it promotes a healthy physical attitude. You did as you were told in school in the seventies and no answering back. One lad in my class who was a bit funny over all that kind of thing simply had his vest pulled over his head and off one day and had to deal with it and he no hairs on his chest. Nowadays someone somewhere would likely accuse that teacher of something close to a physical assault, hurting his feelings or violating his human rights.

Hope that answers your question Rachel, although I think it's quite rare to see lads by 16 with noticeable chest hair like I had. It might seem weirder nowadays with male grooming all the thing whereas in the seventies all men seemed to have hairy chests and want them it seemed.

Graham - I was pressured to go to my school year reunion by my wife, as I wasn't greatly bothered. This was 2005, and I'd left in 1980. I didn't know what to expect, but one thing I did not anticipate was a couple of my old teachers hanging about as well as one or two from the class. It was a place where half the male staff used last names on boys only. Recognising my old metalwork-woodwork teacher Mr Underwood, I walked close by and before I got a chance to reintroduce myself thinking he'd not recall me he shouted out to me by surname only, twice. I was with my wife and a bit stunned. With my hello I jokingly said just his last name Underwood back at him like he had to me but he was having none of it and he said - Mister Underwood if you don't mind. It was like being naughty and regressing back into circa 1980. My wife was unamused by that and fumed sarcastically - You can call my husband Mister Farthing if you like, or just Alex I chipped in, my actual first name. The look on his face was priceless. The conversation was brief and we moved on to someone else rapidly. He never did call me Alex or Mister Farthing when we concluded. We laughed about it later at home as I never had a high opinion of this teacher but managed to come away thinking even less of him than at school. A shame there were none of my own PE teachers there that day as that could have had the potential for even more bother. I was an outright refusenik for some PE and preferred to take the consequences, sometimes a detention. The changing room was a grotty thing and the shower tiles had mould in corners. Use that, you've got to be kidding. After a while I just thought, not showering anymore here. None of their hollering at me had much effect. I just walked out nearly always and eventually they gave up on my strong headedness and I got away with things other boys could only dream of. Unfair I know but c'est la vie. A bit like Boris Johnson in some ways!

I hate acronyms especially when I'm presumed to know what they mean and then have to guess or look them up. I must have led a sheltered life. Haven't nearly all of us who showered with our PE teachers gazing on technically been a part of this cmnm thingy, although I didn't get much of a kick out of it.

One for Nicky, and I had not one but at least three PE teacher's very much like your one. I wasn't ginger, or too thin and had nothing too obvious to be picked up on but some of these guys used to be able to find more than enough to have a go at just for the sake of it. One in particular was absolutely impossible to please. You could never jump high enough, run fast enough or score enough to please him even if you broke the school record. With these guys it seemed like a twice weekly attempt to grind self worth right into the ground.

Oh dear Stuart, hate to say this but in a week when the jockstrap overkill has been confronted on here and agreed with by others, for you to come along and stick an obvious fetish based contact, which is what CMNM is, strikes me as somewhat extraordinary if you wish to be taken seriously.

You said to Tom 'it has nothing to do with my contribution to this site' but of course it does if you are using it for the purposes of this H.W forum. It affects perceptions here and especially when you made a mention of swimming with nothing on.

Nothing wrong with such a harmless thing at all by the way. Just plays into the hands of those here who call out this kind of thing.