Peter Emmerson

Please accept my apologies for the late reply.  Part of the explanation for the delay has been my preoccupation with a medical problem.  However, the main reason for my inability to respond till now is my quandary over the two very contrasting feelings I have in relation to my time at QEGS.  Like too many of us from working class backgrounds who passed the scholarship, I was unprepared for my confrontation with the pseudo public school culture of the grammar school that was so alien and unsympathetic to my way of life.  Thus, on one level I associate the school with the pain of deep personal humiliation, guilt and regret; a place where I developed a distorted persona to counter something that until then had been foreign to me, the prolonged experience of underperformance and failure (the sports field apart).  During those years I became a stranger to myself, gaining self-respect from stupid bravado which sanctioned fooling about as opposed to working hard to get good marks.  The school (teachers) simply reinforced this process.  Thus, I was mostly at odds with those who were supposed to teach and help me: Jacky Dodds (biologist) is the only member of staff I recall with any respect or affection, the sting of the tube from a Bunsen burner apart. 

However, rather perversely, I also remember these days with great joy.  I was privileged (I must confess that at more sober moments I find this conclusion somewhat suspect considering the above) to find comfort in a profound camaraderie with a group of ‘lads’, reprobates all, (alphabetically by surname of course) from A to W, with whom I fooled around in class and corridors, played sport, frequented Smith’s record department and the Pit on a Saturday morning with the hope of meeting some birds.  These memories of our time together occasionally bring tears to my eyes: to paraphrase Dickens – they were the very best and the very worst of times – thank you all!  But nothing can bring these back.

Since those days I have gone some way towards putting the record straight and become more me, finding self-respect in less self-destructive ways, although scars from the damage done during those years at QEGS never quite heal.  However, unlike our self-imagery, those very best and worst of times can never be resurrected, and should perhaps be left to languish warmly in the past until some alcoholic night when they emerge without warning, amongst newer friends and strangers, to re-people the present with those of the past, those beautiful ‘unreliable memoirs’.