MY GRAMMAR SCHOOL INTERVIEW 1959
So I passed the 11+ and was offered an interview at King Edward VI Grammar School Stratford upon Avon, (Shakespeare's school – perhaps). This was six miles from my home village and would necessitate a bus or train journey, paid for by Warwickshire Education Committee.
Dressed in my (not very) best mother took me on the appointed day. We arrived early so we passed the time in the New Place garden opposite the school – in 1959 it was open to the public; I still remember walking anxiously up and down the path parallel with the road with small yew topiary bushes either side.
The time came and I left her in the garden. I don't remember how I ended up in the headmaster's office on the first floor of Pedagogue's House – there must have been other boys being interviewed and there was no room there to wait – yet I don't remember seeing any or waiting.
So there was the headmaster Leslie Watkins (Pont) and the mathematics master (Jack) Taylor sitting behind a desk with a chair for me facing them. It was very scary. It lasted perhaps half an hour.
The killer question was “Which way is north”. I was silent for perhaps a minute and stared in turn through the Elizabethan leaded windows on either side, twisting in my chair. Then I pointed (in the wrong direction). “How did you do it?” Jack asked. So I explained: “Well, the Guild Chapel altar must be at the east end, and my mother and I waited in the New Place garden opposite the Guild Chapel, so I think east is over there. Then I imagined a compass card and rotated it in my mind till the E pointed east, and pointed where the N indicated” (I had actually got the Guild Chapel wrong).
It was over, and I hurried back to mother anxious in the garden – I was unsure how I had done, and we went home.
I got in. A bit like an Oxbridge interview – it doesn't actually matter if the answer is correct, it is how you answer it. A node point on one's time line.
That yew bordered walk is burned into my memory; whenever I visited Stratford after I had left I would visit it and remember our anxiety – but then they closed the garden to the public and made it part of paying New Place.