Rosalyn Warner's Study

I was born in the town of Harwich, Essex, England in the early 1960s. Harwich, for those not familiar with it, is a port town on the east coast of England. The town where the Mayflower originally sailed from on its voyage to the Americas. A town with a strong seafaring tradition, (being surrounded on three sides by water tends to do that). I must therefore have had travelling in the blood from a very early age because since I left town in 1977 I've since travelled through five continents and worked in three of them.

INFANT SCHOOL

At a very impressionable age I was unceremoniously thrown screaming into the boiling pot of the British educational system. It’s not unsurprising that I rebelled the whole way through my school life. If there was any kind of trouble, you could be sure that I’d be involved in some way, even if it was on an observational basis.

My first taste of school was at Parkeston Infants School, not surprisingly situated in the village of Parkeston. This was the dock area of the larger town of Harwich and as my father worked on the docks, I was in a school just down the road from them. We had a council house only a few miles up the road in Upper Dovercourt (another area of Harwich) but Parkeston School was the nearest school available to those in this area of the town.

This was the 1960s, but I wasn’t a traditional baby boomer. I wasn’t the product of free love and mass orgies. In fact mass orgies have never featured in my life. (Suggestion considered). I was the fifth, and last, in a line of children and my mother was in her forties when I eventually came along.

At the age of seven, we moved to the opposite end of town and although I was living in Dovercourt, my new infant school was over the railway crossing in an area called Bathside. You could see the school from our back garden but the existence of a railway line and high fences precluded a short cut. I was required to walk the long way around twice a day.

My first day was spent in the wrong class. A helpful friend told me where all the new kids went to class and I spent the day there. The problem was that I was in my final year of infant school and sitting in the beginners class. It took the teachers two days to find me but I had great fun playing with the younger kid’s toys.

Mealtimes weren’t any better, I had my first confrontation within a week. The rules stated that all children must eat everything put in front of them. No exception. No excuses. This was a pity really because at the tender age of seven, I was branded a troublemaker and although not maliciously, have lived up to that name since. I hated cabbage, spinach, brussel sprouts, lettuce, peas and anything with a similarly greenish flavour. Carrot were acceptable and at a push I’d eat swede and turnip but the green family were a definite NO NO.

I was only seven and being talked to by an authority figure. I had an order which had been followed by the threat of being made to sit at the table until it was complied with. All the other children had already returned to classes by this point in time.

Obligingly I placed a spoonful of greens into my mouth and spat them back onto the plate. There was no way I was going to eat them and if necessary I’d sit in the Dinning Room all afternoon. In fact this is exactly what I did do and the same the next day. Teachers shouting, lines, threats and even slippers never budge me from my position. All it did was reinforce my resolve not to adhere to pathetic rules, just because they’re there. I was a rebel already and I hadn't even left Infant School yet. What would the future hold for me.

PRIMARY SCHOOL

By the time I was promoted to Primary school, my disregard for so called authority was truly ingrained. At the age of eight I was already a non conformer and in some ways liked by most of the other children.

The other kids liked to get me to do all the arguing for them and naively I complied with their requests. If the kids had a grievance, yours truly here would be the spokesperson and would consequently receive the punishment. I was a regular at the headmaster’s door. His secretary even recognised me in the street. In a way it was a bit of a joke to the staff. They weren’t stupid. They knew I was taking the blame for everybody and I was never evil, just awkward and argumentative.

SECONDARY SCHOOL

At the age of eleven, there were two possible paths my school life could follow. The 11+ exam was sat by all Primary School leavers and this determined whether you went to a grammar school of the secondary modern. On the whole I personally preferred the idea of being amongst normal kids rather than snobs but the decision wasn’t mine. I sat the exam and came borderline on the results. This effectively meant that my coursework was taken into consideration when making the final decision. There was a slight problem here and that was the teachers not being able to find any. This wasn’t surprising to me because I’d known for years that when I walked out of the school gates I was effectively off duty from education. Homework was a silly idea when there was ample school time to complete all the necessary work. I therefore failed the 11+ assessment.

It was the secondary modern school for me. The place for kids unwilling to do homework. The school of no Latin or other silly subjects. An establishment full of kids from the dock and factory families of the town. I was with my own kind and even now I prefer the company of working folk rather than snobby social climbers. Secondary school was to be as eventful as my former years of education.

It was a small town and as such my reputation had preceded me. It was a reputation I was determined to live up to and in this school I spent just as much time outside the headmistress’s office as I had in my previous schools. If I wasn’t there, I was standing outside a classroom door somewhere else in the school. In all my schooling the one thing I learnt well was the art of patiently standing by a door. I was an expert at the subject of being sent out of class for not conforming.

A few specific incidents stand out in my secondary schooling, the hearing aid incident being one of them. Our science teacher was inflicted with one of these gadgets and being the mean students we were, it gave us the opportunity for a practical joke. During one of his classes, every pupil started miming at the same time. He could see our mouths working but couldn’t hear anything. After a few minutes slapping the hearing aid box in his top pocket, the telephone bell in the corridor blew it for us.

Another incident involved an art teacher and a drawing pin (thumb tac). For some reason, after sitting on the aforementioned item, the teacher in question automatically singled me out as the culprit. Granted it was my idea but everybody else was in on the prank. Once again though, I was standing outside the headmistress’s door awaiting my punishment. How I avoided the slipper I’m still surprised about. I realised early on in life, just how far I could push something without going over the edge. I’ve come close to disaster on many occasions but so far luck has been with me.

COLLEGE LIFE

Upon leaving secondary school, I had three choices, leaving full time education, staying on at 6th form or going to college. My ‘O’ Level results had been adequate. I could have done better but the interest in structured anything wasn’t there, let alone structured education. I was a free spirit even in my younger days, maybe with blood lines from gypsies or the like. More school was definitely not an option in my mind.

Colchester Institute of Higher Education

College life was the opposite to school. There were no petty rules and regulations. Students were treated like adults and expected to act responsibly. This was a lot to ask of somebody as unruly as myself and as expected, beyond my capabilities. It was me who cracked the access codes into the university computers and I had led the classroom exodus to the pub on the last day of term.

Our computer science ‘A’ Level tutor had two years of torment as a fellow student and myself repeatedly gained access to not only the university computer but the tutor sections as well. Little messages kept appearing on the screen when they logged on and changing the codes never seemed to make any difference. When our hard pressed tutor was showing a group of new student how to access the computer, a message suddenly flashed on the screen. “Don’t touch. It bites”. This appeared in large capital letters, just as his finger went to touch the keyboard. This was in the days of punched cards and ticker tape, when computers didn’t have any sound apart from the chuntering of the paper tape reader.

Even at college people tended to follow my lead. When it came to doing something not quite right, I would be able to lead the whole class astray. On the last day of term we had computer science in the afternoon. Nobody was really interested in doing college work but the holidays didn’t start until the following day and the timetable stated that we were required to attend the class. When the tutor arrived though, he found an empty room and a note scrawled on the blackboard. “Class adjourned to the Marquis de Granby” was written in four inch high letters. The name referring to the nearest pub to the college. We were all in the lounge bar when the tutor arrived and a pint of his favourite brew soon doused any fires burning in him. I left college after two years with ‘A’ Levels in computer science and pure mathematics.

SCHOOL OF NURSING

With an ‘A’ Level in computer science and other qualifications in data processing, even I expected to persue a career in the field of information technology. Computers in those days filled the whole floor of a building, with magnetic tape reels whirring around in circles and I was looking at spending the best part of my working life behind one of those desks.

Alas, the ‘Rat Race’ wasn’t for me. The thought of sitting behind a desk for years soon disappeared after a small taste of office life working for British Rail. My career path took a ‘U’ turn and headed down the medical track as I entered the nursing profession. Three years at the school of nursing in Colchester and I was to be a registered nurse. First I had to get passed all the book work and examinations.