Mr. Harris, our history teacher at secondary school (ages 11-16), was very smart, very posh, quite handsome with his crinkly, post-war hairstyle, and had a wonderfully self-confident smile.
I like to think the smile intended to incorporate the rest of us as well as advertise his many personal achievements and professional advantages.
The self-confidence got the better of him once or twice, or maybe just emphasised how good he felt to be alive and wanted to share some things with others. The one example I’ve always remembered was his sudden pronouncement – accompanied by the smile in class – that ‘I only buy Oxford marmalade.’
Much more to the point was Mr Harris’s fame for getting the best GCE (not GCSE) results, among all the subjects, year on year.
In my case I’m talking 1963/64. In those days we had to send a plain postcard to the examiners with a list of the subjects we had taken, for them to send back with a ‘P’ or an ‘F’ against each one.
We all put History at the top of our lists, thinking it best to start with a ‘P’ as our covering hands moved slowly down the back of the postcard. Aargh! An ‘F’ for me and too many others as well!
We tried to look into it and the word was that the examiners – for the first time in years – wanted more historical research and analysis than just the ‘names and dates and places’ that had always served Mr Harris’s students so well.
(I got English and English Lit and, somehow, Maths and French, but I was okay because I was already attached to a local professional football club and that was the way I wanted to go as I left school that summer. Before leaving, three of us made a point of going to watch Mr Harris open the batting for Old Shootershillians, very posh, one bright Sunday morning).
I don’t know how the results disaster affected Mr Harris, his smile or his taste in marmalade. I just hope and assume he sailed through it with the smile still very much intact.
I’d also like to tell you about something else I treasure that happened a full two years earlier.
Mr Harris must have heard about the demon bowler in the school cricket team, and he got the idea to attach a cricket net to the side of the ancient building in New Cross, SE London, for me to sling a few down to ‘Mr Harris the batsman.’
It was just wonderful for a working-class lad. The smile took on a whole new and grown-up meaning and I was even inspired to learn and practice the off break from watching Jim Laker on the telly, who had taken 19 – 19! – wickets in a Test match in 1956.
Mr Harris, bless him, took it upon himself to send me for a trial for the London Schools team. I got in, we played Eton College at their ultra-posh place in Windsor (only £63,298.80 a year these days) and lost a not very close match on their hallowed sports ground.
My cricketing career didn’t go any further. Unlike football, where even promising eight-year-olds are ‘scouted’ by pro clubs, no one approached the promising young spinner to meet the coach for a session at Kent or Surrey.
However, by sidestepping local journalism for a year or two, I went on to play a league game for my beloved VPS team against HJK at the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki in 1975.
How Mr Harris would have smiled.
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