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Leeds - Roundhay
Someone in the education system had noted that I was a ‘grammar school’ boy and so I had been allocated a place at Roundhay Grammar School rather than an ‘ordinary school’ much closer to home. On the day after we moved to Harehills Dad took me on the tram to my new school for an interview with the Headmaster. We caught the No 3 Roundhay Circular tram from the stop at the corner of Roundhay Road and Gathorne Terrace outside the Gaiety Cinema. I found it a splendid but noisy and rattly ride: first up the hill to Harehills shopping parade, past the imposing art deco Clock Cinema on the junction with Easterly Road, and then onto the exciting, high speed tracks. The speed tracks threaded their way for about a mile uphill from the Clock cinema, through the picturesque Gipton woods to gentile Oakwood village where trams and other traffic merged once more. The speed tracks ran in a separate highway parallel to the main road. On the downhill homeward journey, the trams swayed alarmingly from side to side, wheel flanges screaming as they were thrust violently into the rails.
Dad and I got off the tram at Oakwood and walked up Gledhow Lane through an avenue of expensive looking houses. After a hundred yards or so the road divided; the way to the girls school continued to the left while Dad and I branched right along Old Park Road and very soon the school grounds appeared on our left. I was mightily impressed with my first sight. The sheer size of the school and its grounds was far more extensive than QEGS in Wakefield. I learned later that Roundhay was really two collocated schools; the sprawling boys grammar school was separated from the adjacent girls high school by the shared superb gymnasium, the large shared indoor swimming pool, and a long avenue of tall trees.
My diary entry for the day of that introductory visit tells that the Head Master was away and so the Second Master, Mr Hall, personally showed me around. I can remember nothing of my tour around the school nor can I remember anything more about Mr Hall. In the afternoon I went with Mum and Dad into Leeds to get my new school uniform.
The day after my conducted tour I was on my own. I caught a tram at 0810 and followed the same route as the day before but now I was wearing my brand new school uniform. There were hundreds of boys going my way up the hill from Oakwood but no-one spoke to me. I felt very conspicuous in my new uniform. As I entered the school grounds I made my way across the grass heading for the main front door, as Dad and I had done the day before. I was, perhaps, so overawed by my new school and worried about what lay ahead that I failed to notice that none of the other boys was following me. When I got inside I learned from the receptionist that the front entrance and the grassed area leading to it was out of bounds to pupils.
I was told to sit quietly in Reception until Morning Assembly was over and wait until my new Form Master, Mr Watson, came for me. He introduced himself and shook my hand! That made me feel good. He then led me to a light and airy classroom on the ground floor overlooking the playing fields. This was the home of Form 1A. It felt a bit like a demotion being in 1A when I had just left 3A at QEGS but there were no preparatory classes at Roundhay and so it was logical for the class numbering to start at one.
I was feeling very apprehensive but I need not have worried. A new boy was a novelty and a welcome, albeit temporary, distraction from lessons. The 30 or so boys in the class greeted me warmly as I was introduced. They wanted to know where I was from, why we had moved, what my father did, what my interests were, and so on. After a few minutes the Master brought the introductions to a halt and directed me to sit in a desk right at the front of the class by the windows. Since this was the only vacant desk it had obviously been made ready for me.
Without any more ado, Mr Watson launched off into my favourite subject, Latin, and I was pleased to find that I appeared to be more advanced than the rest of the boys in that subject. After a few minutes I was told to read some Latin out loud and that immediately prompted lots of giggles. At QEGS the classical pronunciation was always used where a Latin V was pronounced as an English W, but at Roundhay the Latin letter V was always pronounced as a V and that was the reason for the giggling. I soon realised that the Perfect Tense of the verb amare, to love, amavi amavisti amavit etc, sounded much more masculine when the Vs were pronounced as Vs and not Ws! Nevertheless it took some getting used to. I did wonder, and not for the first time, how anyone really knew how the ancient Romans had pronounced their language.
It was not only Latin as spoken in Leeds that had its quirks. I caused more laughter when I pronounced my aitches and said that I lived in ‘Hare-hills’ and went to ‘Round-hay’ School. My school mates mimicked me, mostly in a friendly, bantering fashion, I think. At my new school, initial aitches were almost always dropped and those in the middle of Roundhay and similar words were not pronounced but were replaced by glottal stops. The teachers made absolutely no attempt to correct that. I had to learn quickly, in the interests of what today’s teenagers would probably call street cred, to drop the fairly refined accent I had learned to use at QEGS and adopt the distinctive Leeds dialect. So, to stay with the crowd, I learned to say that I had moved from ‘Wa’field’, that I now lived in ‘are’ills and that I went to ‘Roundi’ school. Who would have thought that nine miles could made so much difference? Throughout my time at Roundhay I always thought it rather odd that the French and Latin teachers insisted on the correct pronunciation of those languages but no-one insisted on the correct pronunciation of English.
The Leeds dialect was my downfall when I went off for RAF officer selection several years later. However, later still, when I worked in Arabic-speaking countries, the Yorkshire glottal stop was a positive advantage because in Arabic the glottal stop is a fully-fledged consonant in its own right. I easily mastered the Arabic glottal stop but it took me longer to master two other Arabic consonants that are usually transliterated as 'h' but neither sound anything like English aitches. Furthermore, when there is an 'h' anywhere in an Arabic word, it is always pronounced and never dropped.
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Throughout my time at Roundhay I always thought it rather odd that the French and Latin teachers insisted on the correct pronunciation of those languages but no-one insisted on the correct pronunciation of English.