Summer Times is the Journal of the Old Scarborians Association

Cush Turnbull used the incentive of half‐
penny rewards in 1938 in his English class.
We were learning Analysis, dividing up sen‐
tences into separate parts and classifying each
word or phrase according to its function e.g
adjective, adverbial phrase etc. First out to the
front of the class with the correct solution
received ½d. I actually won three halfpence
and really enjoyed the game. It was a good
competitive aid to learning and what was
learnt became and remained embedded in the
memory, just as did Pete Cornish’s German
songs (Ich hatt’ ‘nen Kameraden…….usw)
So many happy days at Scarborough High
School filled a treasure chest and became
lifetime memories.
FURTHER RECOLLEC-
TIONS
by Peter Newham
(1954-61)
As a relative new boy with
only three years member‐
ship and two London din‐
ners under my belt I
thought I had exhausted my
declining reserves of mem‐
ory until my attendance at the recent Scarbor‐
ough Dinner. However, despite there being
very few immediate contemporaries to prod
my memory, others present certainly
prompted further recollections and the em‐
barrassment of seeing some very gauche
pictures of myself at 15 (the prompter in Mac‐
beth and subsequently Midsummer Nights
Dream) and indeed identifying a photograph
of myself standing next to Mike Mansfield,
whom I had previously, in one of my fre‐
quent lapses of memory, denied having ever
known at School!
I must admit my previous reluctance in join‐
ing the Association had been conditioned not
only by inertia but partly by the feeling that,
even with advancing years, looking back on
what were not always halcyon days could
perhaps be interpreted as a reflection of ad‐
53
vanced age. At School I perhaps now with
hindsight plead guilty to being one of the
more bookish wimps, with an intense dislike
of Rugby, who consequently lived in fear of
the caustic tongue of Jock Roxburgh and the
dreaded Thursday pilgrimage to Oliver’s
Mount, tempered only by the 6 th form oppor‐
tunity to forsake this for hockey with Nag.
Gallagher. This was also further leavened not
only by playing every second week on the
South Sands below the Spa when the tide was
out but also by the occasional prospect of
competition against the Girls’ Schools,
though even this was daunting to those of us
who were then backward in coming forward!
On this subject I can also recall the dancing
lessons with Scarborough Girls High School,
locked in the gym at the Girls School to the
accompaniment of the piano, with Colditz
style supervision, which regrettably did little
for my musical or social education!
Back to the Dinner (a most enjoyable event)
and it was good to see Bob Watson, for whom
some of the credit or blame for my capability
or otherwise in English must rest, instantly
recognisable even 45 years later (which is not
something that can be said about most of the
rest of us) though neither his remonstrances
on the sins of splitting infinitives nor ending
sentences with prepositions seems to matter
very much these days, as they appear no
longer to be matters which we keenly strive
for!!
Jack Thompson, the re‐acquaintance of whom
I made after 45 years, has referred in a previ‐
ous Edition to the Newby County Primary
intake of 1953 – Andy Wyvill, Michael Kemp,
John Edwards, John Kennedy, Jack and my‐
self, and he also demonstrated an almost
encyclopaedic recollection of other female
members of the class, many of whom ended
at Scarborough Girls High School ‐ Gillian
Lincoln, Judith Appleby and others, which
quite puts my own imperfect memory to
shame and traces us all back to when we
were aged six or seven. But this is all seri‐