Summer Times is the Journal of the Old Scarborians Association

so we wandered round the outside for a while.
Then Barry John, the former Welsh fly‐half,
who was on the trip as a newspaper corre‐
spondent, decided he could get through a
window. He squeezed through and jumped
down, straight into a (shallow) tank of diesel
fuel. No one would sit with him on the way
back.
On the morning of the match we went
“shopping”. A typical window in a depart‐
ment store contained a few cans of fruit, a
cheap tennis racquet, some T‐shirts and a bicy‐
cle wheel. These people had nothing. We
bought a few little gifts, more out of curiosity
than need, but it was difficult to be in such an
atmosphere, with a pervading and perpetual
air of unhappiness.
And so to the match. It was preceded by Eng‐
land U‐21 v Romania U‐21 and featured a
flanker with long blond hair who covered
every inch of the pitch and scored four tries.
His name was Neil Back. In the full interna‐
tional Simon played well and so did the other
debutant, Jeremy Guscott. All Jeremy’s family
were there, from Gran downwards. After‐
wards Jeremy’s father, Henry, got absolutely
plastered, but seemed to have the gift of reach‐
ing that state in an amazingly gentlemanly
fashion. We became good friends with the
Guscotts from then on.
On our way home next day we decided to give
all our residual cash to the guide and driver. It
was only a few pounds. Later we realised we
had probably given them the equivalent of a
month’s wages. I often wonder what hap‐
pened to her.
A few weeks after our return we were watch‐
ing the TV scenes of Bucharest in the throes of
revolution, as the people of Romania took
advantage of the weakness of the masters in
the USSR. We saw tanks in the streets we had
walked and bullets hitting the hotel where we
had stayed as the revolutionaries took their
revenge on Ceausescu and his family.
52
HA’PENNY CUSTOMS
By Frank Bamforth (1935-42)
It might be thought surprising by boys of to‐
day that a coin with a face value of only
£0.0020833 could actually have some purchas‐
ing power. But in the Thirties the humble half‐
penny (or half a meg) bought us each morning
a 1/3 rd pint bottle of milk with a cardboard top
and punch‐out disc for the straw.
At break Harry Johnson served out the milk
from galvanised steel crates on trestle tables
set up in the roadway in front of the school,
collecting more and more coins in his out‐
stretched hand till it held fifty or more. On
cold, wet winter days he operated in the Hall,
where we stood the mushy half frozen bottles
on the lusty old black radiators to thaw out
and gurgle.
There were some items priced at ½d in the
School Tuckshop on the bottom corridor, as
well as in Philip Smart’s (of Filey) attache case
as we left Scarborough station for Aix‐les‐
Bains in 1938. I think he was completely sold
out of everything before we got to York!
One day at the end of term the word went
round at lunchtime that something good was
happening in the lower playground. It was
Bon throwing down halfpennies in handfuls
from the Hall or Lecture Theatre windows.
The ensuing scramble down below was excit‐
ing and enjoyable, especially if you struck
gold!
Sometimes the dreaded Brad held jumble sales
of lost and forgotten items in the gym, or as
the blackboard outside Joe Boss’s office an‐
nounced (probably written by a pupil in lA or
Prep) ‐ JUMBLE IN JIM. At these sales you
might, for a halfpenny, obtain a broken bicycle
pump or a pair of plimsolls or a ruler. Unless
the item was claimed from the floor, when
Brad if satisfied of ownership would withdraw
it from the sale and throw it to the owner,
wrapped in a sarcastic remark.