Burnley Grammar School

Nathan Hind on 29th October 2023 at 01:51

I wouldn't be willing to share my professional details because who knows what sort of allegations might be made about me by one poster in particular. I certainly don't wish to spend my days refuting allegations at hearings rather than treating my patients.

Look back, I was recognised by another poster and I agreed it was me and several more thanked me for the advice I gave them which was hugely beneficial in a world where men's health is a hugely under developed aspect of health care.

I mean this Nathan as the most gentle of challenges back because I read your accounts and take them at face value and you sound excellent at what you do but would you be happy to post your school profile and details of QTS with the TRA for all to see? You could lead on your call by example?

Nathan, at what point do you introduce skins and shirts to the new intake.

Hugh you can solve the doubters by simply placing your GP profile on here as a link as proof. I don't see why that should be a problem as I have given out my own full details on this forum and everyone knows the school I work at and have been able to view everything about me if they wish.

I feel that people who are genuine are always happy to do this, especially when asked. I do hope you can also do so. I always find people who are able to give specifics about what they talk about more interesting. Nobody should fear others checking them out when they speak on a public forum on a certain subject.

Is it not fair that when someone claims something about themselves that they provide some evidence to substantiate it. It would be nice to see more people doing so. I don't think this is compromising anybody's privacy or safety to do so, like I have myself.

I did accuse Alan and others of giving me a hard time over one or two of my own comments about my job but that is free speech for you. I hope I gave back good enough answers. I'm certainly not unhappy about that, I have to handle classes full of teenage boys so one or two critical middle aged men on a forum is no problem at all.

I was unaware that there was anything about the Communal Shower Association website that should cause undue concern. I don't think it had any direct connection to naturism as was suggested but even if it did I'm not sure there is anything too terrible about people who choose that lifestyle.

Michael asked me on 22nd October if PE teachers need to ask for parental consent to allow school showering. The answer to that question is no, there is no direct parental consent needed to be given or asked for in a formal sense in my school. It is 'assumed consent' as all the facts and details are out there and if any of those details cause concern then that is the responsibility of a parent to come forward. I personally wouldn't have any problem with a consent slip needing to be returned but even that could lead to problems and division.

Before I broke up last week I asked some of the new intake how they found their first half term and if they had anything they'd like to say about any aspect of PE over the first six or seven weeks. I made it very clear that any worries can be dealt with quietly out of lesson time privately if anyone ever wishes to discuss anything. I am always available to listen.

Jim Dale as Dr. Kilmore springs to mind more. What a carry on.


(sense of humour please)

Devon Lad on 28th October 2023 at 13:58

Well, no doubt about you being an utter prat!

Gary, Thank you for your message. sadly the friend I mentioned died on December 30th last year, but I was just showing that our school, and the teachers in particular caused certainly a mental scarring, but pace' "Doctor" Hugh not a mental illness. It played on his mind towards the end of his cancer. Incidentally, if that man really is a doctor it just shows the contempt some professionals have for those they consider of a lower order. The way he writes " a list of qualifications which in any event I doubt would be understood" is condescending in the extreme, I am sure we could all understand his branch of the profession, were he to be in it.

There was another lad, who, unlike my late mate Dave and myself was very fond of sports of all sorts, and it was he who was physically abused by "R". He only told me this about eighteen months after we left and I was sworn to secrecy, and the first time `I mentioned it to anybody else was last year to somebody he didn't know, and I know through correspondence of an entirely different sort. I kept the secret for over forty years, and I as I am not in contact with him now, and I'm giving no clues to his identity, I don't feel I have broken the confidence unduly, though clearly I have to the letter. He only told me long after the event because he was afraid of anybody, including his parents, finding out - such was the deep impression R's words always made "if there is any trouble, it is me they will believe not you". He had used those words to us three, and doubtless many others during his career, when they cottoned on to his games and tricks.

I was lucky that I was not "R's" type - I was dark and not very tall or athletic, neither was Dave, but the third lad was, and fair haired to go with it (funny how men with those proclivities have types).

The only agenda I have is to point out that not all teachers are as Mr Chips as they like to make out they are, neither are all nurses "angels" or all doctors monuments to their profession. There are rotten apples in every barrel, including, sadly the police, and certainly among politicians.Let's not just trust them, ipso-facto, because they hold these professions.

We have had a number of people on this site saying how uncomfortable they were made to feel, some of the older ones had much more physical punishment than we did (though as it was towards the tail end of corporal punishment in schools we did experience some, especially from the late and unlamented Mr.Boreham who used the cane like a writer uses a pen - frequently). It is sad to think there are still wrong-us in the teaching profession, and they get away with it because their victims seldom complain until years later.

People who would wish things to return to the good old days as they see them sicken me.It was a charter for the unhinged teacher and their prejudices, like the lad who told us he was given short shrift by his headteacher because his mum was German. However good an RAF man he might have been, he was certainly not cut out for teaching., and he and others ike him should have been weeded out.

Finally, I would just say this. When "Original Andy" started writing his abusive posts about me, I gave my email address and invited him to contact me privately, to save boring the rest of the readers. He failed to do so, despite a second invitation. I don't know what his problem is, or Hugh's, but to be described as a "playground bully" by two complete strangers is a bit thick, when, it seems to me, if I were as sensitive as they are, I could make the same claim about them,

I hope this reply gets through to you, because one I wrote earlier today, after the "good doctor's" previous diatribe failed to make the cut, even though it contained no profane language. Then, you see, I am not a doctor.

Comment by: Des on 27th October 2023 at 11:55
Perhaps he's no more a doctor than Richard Chamberlain was back in the 1960's.


Or Dennis Locorriere - Dr.Hook of the 70s.

Alan on 28th October 2023 at 10:32

Oh dear, as I predicted, more flailing around trying to blame others, making spurious attacks all in an attempt to control the agenda here and kick out at people who are undermining his control.

Of course people are seeing straight through it and out the other side.

Nobody on this forum should be giving anybody else with alleged mental health difficulties a difficult time.

Please just use the power of your arguments to deal with this and not the power of your insults, that will be more effective.


Alan, you are in touch with somebody from your schooldays you say? Would you be able to ask them to add an opinion to back yours up on here. I was thinking about the others at your school and pondering whether if someone else had come on here and made many of the points about your school in the generality whether they would have been met more favourably because of the way they might present it.

Do you actually consider yourself to have an agenda? If so, what is it? Are you infact the one who has been abused in reality. It would explain rather a lot.

So many questions I know, but you do seem quite complex.

"Doctor" Hugh wrote at 0851 on 28th October apropos me:

"I see now the leaking sewer now wants to know my qualifications"

Echoing a similar comment from "Original Andy"

The good "doctor" also adds "ROTFL"

Would a genuine professional person use that sort of term on a public website?.

I leave it for others to judge.

ROTFL

I see now the leaking sewer now wants to know my qualifications, I could list them but how would anyone know it was genuine? You can see the line of attempting to discredit me and all others who don't agree with the Alan agenda rolling out. The playground bully is just what he is.

If you look back though, you will see that I talked at one point about my role as a doc for a rugby team and I was recognised by another poster who was a member of that team and indeed complimented me on what I had done for him. That's more credibility here than a list of qualifications which in any event I doubt would be understood.

The latest post on 27th October 2023 at 17:01 is really a further demonstration that I'm right. There is flailing around attempting to attack everyone and externalising blame for their own failings. It's something you see quite often when you are signing forms for detention under mental health legislation. Fortunately not something that happens often but it's never nice. In addition to the docs, a social worker and an ambulance crew you often have to have the police present to restrain the person. I could see that happening here as false and unfounded allegations are made about all present. The police just put the cuffs on in those circumstances.

Comment by: Ian on 20th October 2023 at 17:15
"Yes, we see each others willies"


The real reason for communal showers fear in school isn't it. I'll admit it was mine. Everyone always skips around this glaringly obvious fact it seems to me.

The same goes for adults in gyms too, like Ian's comment actually was referring to. But the adults choose to be in those gyms, at school you don't.

Alan on 27th October 2023 at 17:01

Dear oh dear, more of Alan's sewage polluting what is otherwise good conversation as ever. On the attack with insults for everyone as he attempts yet again to control the discussion and make it fit his narrative.

How sad he is.

I support Mike's comment at 19.44 today.

I don't agree with those suggesting women should not be participating. Very few women do comment regularly anyway. For example, just recently there were some good comments from Marion about her grandson facing PE at a new school. I see this as a general education forum focused on PE, and boys and girls did this. But if we want to start getting that specific on who should be commenting then perhaps anyone who didn't go to Burnley Grammar should stop saying anything and we can leave it to people such as Rupert recently who actually did.

One for Barney and Marc - Matey Bubble Bath Advert from 1977.

I had these too! What a memory that is. Sharing just like the ad.

https://youtu.be/YqL-2wmF7dw?feature=shared

Greg2: there is certainly a great deal of the actor in teachers, as I suppose there has to be in several professions where you have to "meet the face to meet the face" as they say, but I think it appalling that a man, who, at best was xenophobic, should seek to take out his frustrations on young boys. I know one of our two very bad teachers is now deceased (the"discipline" fetishist), and it was amazing to read the euologies form from people who were quite aware of his "cranky behaviour", as one teacher, long after our school days put it. I only kept in contact with a couple of the lads I went to school with and one very sadly died just after last Xmas, and in his last letter to me he actually mentioned the two men I have mentioned - and this was at a time when he was very (physically) ill. That is the effect he had on us, and as I have also previously mentioned another boy got it far worse than us, as he was actually molested by R.

Hugh: in view of the oft-repeated " professional expertise. " you claim for yourself, perhaps you would be good enough to let us know your qualifications?.

Anon: Strange that you do not feel able to give us your name - I daresay it isn't anything so unique that you would be immediately identified?. John, Bill, Tony?, don't be such a tease, especially when you seek to traduce the character of others.

"OriginalAndy" - don't flatter yourself, you are not that original. I know you enjoy your little potshots, and if it keeps you happy,I wish you joy.

Just to set "Doctor" Hugh's mind at rest, I am not a candidate for a mental institution, I have already said why it concerns me that middle aged and elderly men take such a - strong interest, shall we say?, - of how boys are clothed for PE in 2023, and often regretting the lack of both minimalism in dress and the removal of the ultimate deterrent of the cane. Perhaps it is because it was middle aged and elderly men that caused us problems in our school that I am so sensitive in this matter - and the - as I have mentioned before - no less THAN THREE P.E teachers at the SAME SCHOOL, not three miles from where I live have been exposed as perverts (I have given a link in the past to this disgusting case) and it concerns me that such outrages are still allowed to persist in an era when there is supposed to be protection for both boys and girls.

I do not consider I have given Nathan a hard time - I have precluded him from any suggestion of impropriety, I have merely said that he seems to adopt that "teacher know best and I'll do what I like" attitude that is far too prevalent in both his profession and in politics. One size fits all does not work, has never worked and never will, however convenient it might be to think that is the case.

"Dr. Hugh" implies he is a medical man, and I will be interested in reading his qualifications. Please don't be shy.

Alan 26th October 17:37

I’m afraid this headteacher would have passed any form of physiological test with ’Spitfire’ flying colours, however inconceivable such a test would ever be. There is a school website, with a historical section (I’ve even found photos of myself on there) where everyones lavishes nothing but immense love and praise for him. His elderly daughter, a frequent contributor, glows with pride at everyone’s love for her father. But we all learnt of his real, concealed, Jekyll and Hyde character. I know my elder brother, who’d left before I arrived, had had a bad time with him. My brother became a member of an exclusive art club as an adult, which contained many retired art teachers as members. All these retired teachers knew about, and confirmed this character’s attitudes. Thankfully, my younger brother, (who had the lightest hair in my family!) was mostly spared his behaviour, as the old headmaster retired during his first year there.

Wow, it’s getting lively round here!

Jim on 26th October 2023 at 14:51
I agree, times have changed beyond recognition or imagination. When I was a boy, there was a phone box two streets away, I never imagined having a mobile to slip in my pocket and carry with me wherever I go that is a lot more than a phone and just as communications have changed, so has everything else. I laughed earlier when I watched an episode of Location, Location, Location. A couple were moving because their ten year old – only child, wanted a room big enough so he could have a double bed and television in his room. I shared a double bed with one of my brothers until I went to university and obviously again when on holiday. We didn’t have a television until about 1974 and a phone was put in when I went to university after great consideration of the need, it barely rang and was barely used.

So, yes, just as those things have changed, I don’t now doubt that corporal punishment of children in the current age is wrong and should not be tolerated under any circumstances but to go back to when I was a boy, well, remember that the death penalty was still on the statute books and I do remember the last execution in 1964. I didn’t know a lad who didn’t get the strap or the stick from his dad for misbehaviour, it was the norm. I bore my dad no ill will nor a schoolmaster either for the cane, you took your normal (at the time) punishment, sat with care for a few days and got on with life.

Don’t get me wrong though, at home, getting the strap was a rare event, perhaps twice a year each (apart from my ‘geography’ year) and always for something pretty serious. Normally dad would talk through our wrong doing and explain how we had to mend our ways but when that hadn’t worked, he ‘let the strap do the talking’ and of course we heard it very clearly. One thing however guaranteed the strap with no warning and it was telling a lie because we had done it knowingly and knew the consequence. The norms of the past should not be judged by the norms of the current time otherwise every death sentence was wrong and at the time they were perfectly legal.

Greg2 on 26th October 2023 at 15:21

I was very lucky, it was only one teacher but he was nasty. I wasn’t the only one on the receiving end of the ‘back street charity boys’ line, there were three of us in the class and we were definitely in trouble with him far more than any other lad. I didn’t try to understand him but hey, if we didn’t meet people like that then, you would meet one sooner or later in life and while I’ve always tried to start out with someone believing the best about them, sometimes you get a nasty surprise and they are a bit of a tw@t. I guess I’m pleased I learned about people like that early on. You will always encounter adversity at points in life so it’s as well to learn about it early.

‘Men’s bath night’ was generally a fun night, we were together as a family in a way that I think many would struggle with now as they stare at their ipads and televisions and split into different rooms. We all loved a good sing and mum was very good on the piano – how many homes now have a proper piano I wonder? Most families in our street had one. Many will have a keyboard, but the sound is not the same no matter what a salesperson tells you.

I guess the difference with the showers at school was it felt grown up. The PE masters always addressed us as ‘men’ so it made you pull yourself up to your full height and push your chest out so showers afterwards were with other men, doing what men did together, all very grown up. I’m glad I was used to them because when I went to university, halls in those days were single sex and we had communal showers there too and I don’t remember any lad being awkward about using them and I continued playing rugby and using the gym so they remained part of my life.

Your secondary school headmaster doesn’t sound good but I remember the absolute dislike of all things German in the years after the war. My dad had been in the navy mostly on convoys to Malta which were very bloody. He didn’t talk much about it and most of what I know I read after he died, but I remember about 1985 going to see a university mate who was working in Germany and my dad was not pleased and couldn’t imagine why on earth I would want to go there. I didn’t tell him afterwards what a good time I’d had and how much I’d enjoyed it and been made welcome. Well done on pulling it all back together though, I admire guys who do that and make a good life.

Marc on 26th October 2023 at 18:18

I remember Maty bubbles! My aunt – my dad’s sister who never married and who if anyone did, spoiled us, she did, bought me a bottle for my birthday, I can still see it – blue with the white ‘cap’ and the face on the bottle. It certainly added something nice to the rather grey bathwater and was even better if I got to go in first. Oh, and the same soap bar, yes, it was often Wrights coal tar and sitting down by the fire afterwards we all smelt of it, it was nicer that carbolic which was the other sort we usually had. I almost want to buy a bar if you can still get it.

I’m not sure back then and I’m a bit older than you, anyone, least of all a PE master did ‘sensitivities’. It was a case of get on with it and you just did. Our guys were fine, they never told us to do anything without doing it themselves and if you asked them to show you how to do something they would do it with you until you got it right. I loved PE.

TimH on 26th October 2023 at 19:27

Two blazers! Maybe I can equal that in a way. My third one was given to me by one of the ladies my mum cleaned for who had a son a couple of years older than me and he’d been to the same school. Maybe mum said I needed a new one and I was given his – which no doubt still had ‘plenty of wear’ left in it and it certainly saw me through my couple of years in the sixth form. I had a few more ‘hand me down’s’ from his mum over the years too and of course at home, hand me downs were pretty normal when again, there was ‘plenty of wear’ left in things.

You are right, the past is another country and may it stay there, it wasn’t all bad and it’s amusing to remember – both the good and the bad. Grammar schools were the places working class lads got a good education and allowed us to have careers that were dreams. I was the only lad in the street to go to university but I do remember how almost everyone turned out on the day I was going to wish me well and I struggled to carry the cakes and biscuits that were made for me to take along. When I graduated, mum and dad gave a party for the whole street, the house was full and it spilled over into the back yard and was a lot of fun, everyone was so proud of me. I had to wear my gown, hood and mortar board for the party and everyone kept cheering me.

Anon on 26th October 2023 at 16:32

Thank you, you make strong and valid points.

Adam Coleman on 27th October 2023 at 01:12

I have quite a few old pictures mostly of rugby teams and a few of games and action. In a few of the informal ones the PE masters are standing with hands on shoulders. I never thought anything harmful at the time and I still don’t though there are those who would now try to suggest something untoward was going on. It wasn’t. Those same masters supported and encouraged us to develop and succeed and put a lot of time and effort into their work, they were dedicated and it’s horrific to now suggest anything other.

I’m a few years older so ‘short back and sides’ was the norm and nothing else tolerated – the barber didn’t ask, it’s what you got like it or not. Well done on the baked beans, you’re a braver man than I would have been.

Perhaps he's no more a doctor than Richard Chamberlain was back in the 1960's.

Hugh on 27th October 2023 at 06:52

Well said. Play ground bully is exactly the right description of the subject and I support fully your calling him out. I don't have your expertise but what you say makes perfect sense at least to me.

I would also say I find something rather 'unsavoury' about the posts women make here, I simply never respond to them. They are usually so full of outrage and tend to miss the point completely but then as you say, they have no lived experience of the subject matter.

Adam Coleman on 27th October 2023 at 01:12

I'm sure you're right about your swimming teacher, 99.9% of us, thankfully, never experienced an abusive relationship with an adult as boys. It is only now that the few wish to see the past through a different prism and suggest that abuse was everywhere. It wasn't and they are wrong. Thank you for pointing that out. Oh and you're also right, fit lads attracted the girls, well I did anyway ;-) there was always a crowd of them watching boys play rugby - but maybe these days they should be arrested for loitering????

Julia on 26th October 2023 at 22:15

Perhaps you're one of those people who always finds the truth hurtful?

Back in the day when I was at school, the playground bully would have been sent for the cane, no other outcome was possible. Instead, I've adopted a modern day approach and recognised that the subject has a mental health problem and suggested he seeks treatment and yet you still have a problem. My judgement is based on observation over time and of course professional expertise. I don't and never have done empathy, just truth.

I will go on to say that on a board where men discuss growing up and time at school I find it very odd that women attempt to participate as they have neither knowledge or experience. Then again, as the case of Jacintha McSherry O'Connor demonstrated so recently, women are abusers of young boys but of course it doesn't often hit the headlines.

I've got photos from the school county swimming team 1985/6 where our teacher who took us for it has both his hands on my bare shoulders in one of them and in another has a hand touching the side of my bare waist. Because of the way people talk nowadays it makes me look at them and question it. Then I come to my senses and realise it's nothing more than the fact that some people are just more tactile than others and that is all there is to it.

Maybe I'm one of the lucky ones, as I've never had problems or worries about how I look and what I'm seen like. To me, seeing some people who torture themselves over a barechest PE lesson is so much wasted time worrying about nothing. To me it is nothing I would even think about and to go bare chested or shirted would make little difference, either are just fine and one is no worse than the other. If somebody wants to look at me, let them, so what, and if they want to judge me, go ahead, what do I care as long as I'm fine with what I look like.

Actually one of the most embarrassing things about my swimming photos I've mentioned is not that we are wearing tight trunks that show one or two of us up a bit, or our bare bodies, but the limp damp looking long eighties mullet hairdo's that three or four of us seem to be sporting that really have not stood the test of time. I can't believe some of us were allowed to be in school with them and told not to get our hair cut shorter.

Being on the boys swimming team at school was beneficial far beyond just the actual swimming. It shot my confidence up considerably, made us popular with teachers and the opposite sex and girls liked boys on the swim team as they knew it meant we were rather fit lads who took care of ourselves.

When I was 15 me and my friend Stu who was also on the swimming team spent a whole lunch hour in a dining room both sitting in a tub of cold baked beans in just our pants for a hospice charity connected to a young teacher who we'd lost to cancer shortly before.

I started school quiet and rarely the type to put my hand up and ended it outgoing and up for anything.

Comment by: Hugh on 26th October 2023 at 13:56
Alan on 26th October 2023 at 03:28
There is one sort of doctor that you normally don't need to make an appointment with, it is made for you, usually without your knowledge and he will just turn up. That's how many people have their first encounter with a psychiatrist. Think on it and tread carefully or it might just happen.



Are these really the words a medical doctor would write Hugh? They seem very aggressive and lacking empathy, everything I don't expect from a doctor.

Jason on 26th October 2023 at 19:30

Thank you for you post. I've watched this board on and off and I don't know how many times I've seen a poster with something positive to contribute start out but be repeatedly attacked by Alan because they don't fit his perverse agenda that no one else seems to identify with. The latest was of course Barney who was accused of 'loitering' when he stopped to watch some sport. There have been many others.

It's refreshing today to see the majority of guys calling out the behaviour and I really do hope it changes things but I won't hold my breath but I guess the lesson is to keep calling it out. There is lots of interesting and innocent chat here and long may it continue.

That's right 'Anon'.

I know he defended himself quite well but one of the more disappointing things I've seen on here in the last two months or so is the reaction to Nathan, mainly from you Alan it has to be said. He seemed to me like an outwardly sociable and articulate person keen to make his case as someone doing a PE job right now that is talked about on here. There was nothing in anything he said that gave me any reason to criticise but Alan you made a determined effort to drag Nathan down to the level of your own low expectations and rotten teacher for doing his job in the way anyone might expect. You made him feel guilty for being a PE teacher at a school that requires showers and you even made him feel guilty for having some PE lessons where boys might run about without their shirts on for a bit, questioning why, with the underlying insinuation that this is being done for less than decent and proper reasons. That gentleman was immediately placed into a highly defensive position. Yet wouldn't most of us agree that there is absolutely nothing wrong in the comments that Nathan made, or a PE teacher doing those things.

I’ve thought long about making this post:

Alan – you made a statement about school holidays which contained a basic (but understandable) error. A number of people corrected you but instead of saying something along the lines of: ‘Oh – I didn’t know that – thanks for the information’ you just grudgingly say that ‘Virtually every school in my area regardless of age have their half term in the last fall week of October’.

Barney’s comments of 25th October ring very true. In Junior school in the late 1950s a friend did live in a ‘2 up, 2 down’ as described by Barney, whilst in the 60s a very good friend lived in a ‘model’ 1930s Council House that was basically 2 up, 2 down (and looking on the web they’re now selling for quite good prices). Although I lived (still do live) in a three bedroom semi that came to my parents ‘through the family’ we were certainly not rich. Barney says having three blazers in seven years – I can beat that – I had two, and the comment about the numbers of shirts & underpants runs true. As has been said – clothes were bought a bigger and you grew into them – I’m not sure how many pairs of gym shorts I had in seven years but it wasn’t a lot. Being an only child didn’t cause problems with privacy except that you were told never to lock the toilet or bathroom doors (or your bedroom door) because you might not be able to get them open again (and what if there was a fire in the night?).

Barney’s comment along the lines of being the ‘first from the family at Grammar School’ resound with me, and I also thing back to ‘family pride’ with memories of going off to University (and indeed the maternal ‘trepidation’ when I disappeared off to Nepal many years ago).
For many of us the past is ‘another country’ – I look back and wonder whether I could have done things differently (& better) but I do know that I got a very good education in a Grammar School in the ‘state system’. This is possibly getting ‘off topic’ but I know of many youngsters of my age from a ‘working class’ background who went on and made a success of things in life, despite all that the ‘system’ threw at us.

I think it must have been somewhere around about 1974 when our dad hung a shower up in front of the bath at home. I would have been 10 years old at the time and had a brother aged 8 and a sister aged 6. When we had all been a bit younger and a bit smaller our mum used to throw all three of us in the bath at the same time on Sunday nights at about half seven in the evening. As we got bigger it was just me and my brother, we used to have a lot of fun together actually and make a bit of fun of it as we would be left alone for a bit before getting told to jump out. Our sister was often jealous she couldn't fit in and join us.

Dad had a job that meant he needed to take a bath every single night of the week when he got home, he was a self employed builder, and so we were never allowed or able to have baths in the week so there was enough hot water for him.

After the shower was fixed up it changed our bathing habits and all three of us used to have to stand in the bath while mum unhooked the shower and showered us while we stood there. She would not let us do that bit ourselves incase we wet the entire room or wasted hot water which the shower saved on. It was nothing like a power shower though, just a steady spray. We'd be soaked wet and then it would stop while we had to wash ourselves sharing the same soap bar then be rinsed down. It was much quicker than a bath but not as much fun as we loved Matey bubble baths. I still shared the bath sometimes with my brother until I was maybe 13 and he was 11 just because it was a fun thing to do sometimes, but mostly it was showers at home.

I never felt at all self conscious at home sharing the shower or bath with the other two but when I started to take PE showers at school I was hit by an unexpected self consciousness I didn't expect and it seemed very different to sharing at home. I soon adjusted though. This was in the mid 70s. I must have taken my first school communal shower in autumn of 1975 as that's when I started the big school, a secondary modern. The importance of showering after PE at that school was impressed upon each of us quite firmly I seem to remember and there was no tolerance from the PE teachers at that school for anybody who thought they'd like to be different and not do so. Showers were compulsory and they made sure you took them and they watched every move we made. Sensitivities not included. A plain water shower was not acceptable, we had our little glycerin browny orange soaps and we had to use them all over with our hands. PE teachers of the time were not exactly what I'd call lovable characters and could often be quite abrupt with you which possibly didn't sit very well with your average sensitive 12 year olds getting used to the new ways. What I do remember is that they didn't like those who made excuses, whined about stuff, bunked off or wouldn't try and make some effort. I don't think they were there to be loved were they and most people if surveyed would probably say they hated PE lessons and even more would probably say they hated school showers if they were honest about it.

Greg2 wrote "At my eventual secondary school, I immediately discovered that the headmaster there seemed to have an instant dislike for me. I didn’t understand this for a long time, thinking he was just strict and difficult, but in the end I discovered the reason. He’d been a Spitfire pilot during the war, and so really hated the Germans. So, as an innocent 12 year old whose mother just happened to come from Berlin, I didn’t stand a chance with him. We somehow had a slightly different look about us as well, so I suppose we stood out a little, which didn’t help either."

That is disgusting and proves what I have often said, and that is that some people should never be allowed in the teaching profession, and those who are should be subject to psychological assessment. prior to employment.There are and were she lunatics about. Whatever his war experiences were, he should have risen above them.

I would suggest it was this type of man, and many others with very jaundiced outlooks, who continued to poison their profession, who should seek the treatment that "Doctor' (if, indeed, he is a doctor) Hugh suggests is appropriate for me.

Alan,
During the first Covid lockdown I really struggled to cope with bitter memories from early in my career - my work had been claimed by other people, who had far less talent than I.
Three years later and I have been able to find my peace - and in fact, dismiss those no talents for what they were.
But at no point did I make my problems anyone else's - apart from a great friend who has had similar problems.
Whatever caused your problems (YOUR problems!!!):

YOU HAVE NO RIGHT WHATSOEVER TO VENT YOUR FRUSTRATION, BITTERNESS AND IREA on anyone else.