LEGS

The Long Eaton Grammar School (Reunited)

Lead Us Not Into Trent Station

a book about Long Eaton, LEGS and beyond by Richard Guise

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Lead Us Not Into Trent Station by Richard Guise

INTRODUCTION

Mr Handlebar in the Market Place, sneezing thurifers at St Laurence's, 'Mad Ron' at the Grammar School... Lead Us Not Into Trent Station is packed with real-life characters from 1950s and '60s Long Eaton. Those who lived through it will find the memories flooding back; those who didn't will just giggle at the chaos. We're also given a front-row seat for an epic battle against European red tape, and an hilarious reminder of the early 'Heath Robinson' days of computers. Returning to Long Eaton in the 1990s, we meet the incomparable - and incomprehensible - Bazzaranshaz.

An Extract from the book:

"Now pay attention, boys!" Mad Ron Barnett, our sportsmaster, strode around the changing room in his loud purple tracksuit. "Stop messing about, Hopkins. Now, next Wednesday, there's no need to bring your PE kit to school. Instead of Games, you'll be having dancing lessons."

To a boy, we all froze. Hopkins left off his attempt to hide Martin's muddy shorts behind the radiator.

"Yes, you heard right: I said DANCING. As in 1-2-3, 1-2-3. Marriot, if you leave your jaw like that you'll catch a hundred flies!" With thirteen pairs of eyes fixed on him, the sunburnt sportsmaster came to a halt by my peg and stood, hands on purple hips, track shoes wide apart.

"In next week's Games period, Mrs Barnett and I are going to drum some basic dance steps into all you oiks - and the first-form girls, God help them ..." He paused for breath before delivering the final blow. "... And then, on the evening of December 15th - yes, Hopkins, I said evening - AFTER SCHOOL - you'll all be ready to skip the light fantastic at the first-form Christmas Dance."

Christmas Dance? With girls?! Our scrawny, half-dressed bodies, already fagged out by the rigours of a cross-country run, shrank even further. Thirteen willies trembled in unison. Thirteen imaginations foresaw the horrors of this latest nightmare of life at LEGS.

Hopkins broke the silence with a question: "Sir, can we do the Twist, sir?" A snigger passed around the changing room.

"This will be real dancing, Hopkins, not your Chubby Checker nonsense. Now, finish getting changed, boys, and I'll be back in five minutes - anyone still here gets 20 press-ups."

With that, Mad Ron left. As we pulled off the rest of our togs, Simpkins lightened the atmosphere a little with an energetic interpretation of the recent No. 1, "Let's Twist Again Like We Did Last Summer." Marriot and Hayes accompanied him on rhythm and bass tennis racquet respectively, while Hopkins beat the bongos, in the form of a basketball between his knees. I laughed from the corner but didn't join in. Pulling on my grey flannel shorts, I counted the days. December 15th. 12 days to D-Day. D for Dance. Just when I could glimpse the Christmas holidays on the horizon, another dark mountain had loomed up from nowhere to block the way. Maybe on December 14th I could ask my Dad to make some trifle, then I'd stick my fingers down my throat and be off sick. Anything but dance with the six-foot Deborah Kirkbride or, even worse - and I trembled at the prospect - with the Two-Ton Tess of 1A, Rosie Ranshaw.

The Wednesday of the dancing lesson dawned grim and cold. At quarter to two in the afternoon, a damp chill still clung to the school hall, as fifty first-form boys trooped in and glued their bottoms to the row of benches along the right-hand wall. Fifty first-form girls glued theirs to the benches opposite. We glared at each other across the brown gulf of polished Parquet tiles that lay between. Not even the shared fear of a torment to come could bridge the chasm between the sexes at LEGS.

Mad Ron and Even Madder Ronette Barnett strode into the Parquet Gulf. This rare sight of the two sports teachers together was a bad omen. They were clearly going to 'do something' together. And after some embarrassing banter, indeed they did. Mad Ron placed a large 78 on the Dansette that sat on the edge of the stage, and a ghastly crackling filled the silent hall. He took Mrs B by the waist and, as a sickening swirl of strings gave them their cue, the disgustingly dapper duo proceeded to move around the Parquet Gulf in what can only be described as a Waltz. It could only be thus described because, along with the 49 other boys, I knew the name of no other dance, except the Turkey and the Twist. The Turkey and the Twist had one unbeatable advantage over the Waltz: neither required any physical contact with other members of the human race... least of all female members. We'd been wondering if we might get away with something like this, or even with one of those prissy folk dances where you just held hands (bad enough) and didn't have to face each other. But no, our worst fears had come true. It was to be the grip-em-and-whirl-em-squeeze-em-and-twirl-em Waltz. Yuk and double yuk.

As Mantovani crackled to a halt, the Bs, who were both purpally attired as usual, turned to face each other and, like a pair of Sumo wrestlers, deeply bowed. Their audience remained deeply unimpressed. Undeterred, Mr B advanced to the blackboard and proceeded to chalk out the basic steps in the same way that he had chalked out the details of rugby union's offside rules the week before. How attractive suddenly appeared the prospect of an afternoon in the cold autumn mud of the rugby field! Who on earth had dreamt up this torture? I suspected OMG had put the Bs up to it. The filthy swine. Our dear headmaster had about as much idea of what eleven-year-olds enjoyed as a baked bean had of a Sputnik's propulsion system. I decided to devote a happy half-hour in bed that night to thinking up twenty ways of killing OMG. Torturing him and then killing him. I could stretch him over his big oak desk and then cane him to death. Maybe when he was half-dead, I'd place a blackboard by his ear and scrape my fingernails down it. I would then slice his ear.... As I gaily considered these pleasant possibilities, I heard from Mad Ron's lips the dreaded words: "All right then, boys. Take your partners!"

Oh God, this was it. I T spells it. A few of the boys shuffled to their feet, and then, realizing their exposure, immediately re-stuck their bottoms to the bench.

"Come on, boys, don't be shy - the girls won't bite you!" Some girls in my class had the audacity to giggle at this. The swines! (The sows!, I mean.) At least they could sit there and be passive. We ere expected to actually do something. If anything was worse than having to touch a girl, it was having to choose which one to touch. The fifty boys dragged themselves from the safety of the benches and proceeded to cross the Parquet Gulf with all the speed and direction of a nervous platoon crossing an abandoned minefield.

Random as our progress was, the demon dice brought Hopkins and me to within a few yards of Kirkbride and Big Ranshaw. I thought of praying to God for a miracle - for a bomb to devastate the entire school perhaps - when a brainwave came to me from nowhere. Well, maybe it came from God. After all, God was a man and no doubt detested the prospect of having to partner the Virgin Mary at Heaven's Christmas Dance. That halo the Virgin wore looked pretty sharp and if He got too close it could easily damage His Holy Beard. From wheresoever it came, I hissed the gist of my brainwave to my fellow victim: "Oy, 'Oppy. Worrif we both ask 'em at the same time? Then thi 'wun't know 'oo wuz asking 'oo. Thi'd jus' gerrup and choose wun each."

We shuffled up and, in unison, mumbled our tempting offer: "Jowtow wanna dance laak?" How could they refuse? Before I knew what was happening, my sweaty hand was towing the massive and entirely silent form named Ranshaw to the middle of the Gulf, and The Mad One had once again set the crackling Dansette into motion. Mantovani lurched into his threatening intro and our deranged leader called on his troops fearlessly to place their right arm around the waist of the enemy. Carefully avoiding the enemy's eyes and keeping her at as great a distance as my short arms allowed, I did as was bid. Like every girl at LEGS from October to May, Big Ranshaw was wearing a nicely washed dark green woolly cardigan, and immediately my sweaty right palm began to create matted patches on it.

As Mad Ron barked out his instructions, all one hundred young heads turned rigidly to the floor, there to observe the gangling progress of the feet which so recently had seemed to be under our control but which now followed their own agenda. 1-2-3,
1-2-3, right-left-together, left-right-together... As if I wasn't having enough trouble, Ranshaw was supposed to be translating each instruction into its opposite - a task that proved mentally and physically impossible. As an extra job for us boys, Mad Ron ordered us to look up occasionally and steer. This led only to my catching Hopkins' eye as he endeavoured to see beyond DK's much taller shoulders. Seeing me, he lost all control and the two of them, who had been veering towards the wall for some time, clattered first into the bench and then to the ground.

This was too much for Mad Ron. He barked at Mrs B, who brought Mantovani's strings to an abrupt halt. As one, we all extricated ourselves from our mutual grasps and stared at Hopkins and Kirkbride, who were by now both bright red, but at least once again on their feet.

"All right, I can see we've all got a long way to go before any of you grace the Pally di Dance. Now let's try something else..."

And so the afternoon dragged on through one disaster after another. The music changed, the steps changed, the partners changed, but it was all equally ghastly. With ten minutes to go to the final whistle, Mad Ron tried to summon up some belated enthusiasm.

"OK, let's just try the Waltz one more time." (Groans all round.) "But this time, something a little different. Imagine that the two lines Mrs Barnett is chalking across the middle of the floor are the banks of a river, and when each couple arrives at the line, the boy will naturally lift up his partner, carry her across the river, and then start dancing again on the other side."

I saw nothing 'natural' in that. We looked at each other aghast... I noticed the girls were even aghaster than the boys. Ron had definitely flipped this time. My only consolation was that my current partner was Penny Morris, one of the smaller girls, and so I might stand a chance.

"Now, boys, find the partners you had the first time we tried the Waltz." Oh no .... Ranshaw! Barnett, you 24-carat swine! Casting a baleful glance back at Little Miss Morris, I trundled through the confusion of bodies until I found The Big R. I noticed she hadn't been making any effort to find me and, being no Charles Atlas, I didn't blame her. I managed to position us just past the Chalk River, the further to delay the dread moment.

"All right", boomed Ron, "now this time the movement around the hall will be anti-clockwise. Music please, Mrs Barnett!"

Even now, forty years later, I would readily shoot Mad Ron Barnett on sight. As soon as Mantovani struck up, I gave my partner a single glance of panic and then bent down to put my left hand behind the Ranshavian knees. As I pushed, Ranshaw bent and I managed to raise the dead weight off the ground. Unfortunately, the sudden pressure of Ranshaw's free-falling torso was too much for my right hand and, head first, my partner hit the banks of the Chalk River. My hand trapped beneath her, I rapidly followed. As we pulled our battered selves to our feet, I heard Ron gaily calling out: "Never mind, Guise, you'll just have to swim across! Ha ha! One-two-three, one-two-three..." Strangely enough, the little river incident seemed to render insignificant the old foot-coordination problem and Ranshaw and I waltzed with a grim and deadly rhythm towards the next crossing, where sheer grit this time saw us safely over to the other side. As Mantovani heaved his final swirling bow, a hundred battered bodies heaved a communal sigh of relief. In a moment of exhilaration at the final escape from our torture, I even bowed to Rosie and she made a faint curtsy in return.

Was this the start of a teenage romance? Certainly not. Having failed to tell midad of the school dance, and trusting that there'd be no headcount on the night, I made no appearance at the main event. I don't know whether Rosie Ranshaw turned up or not, as I subsequently avoided the subject at all costs. And also managed to avoid every occasion that might involve physical-contact dancing for the next 37 years.

There's an audio tape of the book available through Derbyshire Library Service too.

Other Books by Richard Guise:

Trent Station £7.00 plus p&p
Neddytown £4.50 plus p&p
Limerick Gazetteer £4.50 plus p&p

P&P examples are:
1 x 'Limerick Gazetteer of Europe' to UK: £1.00
1 x 'Lead Us Not Into Trent Station' to UK: £1.50
1 x 'Lead Us Not Into Trent Station' to EU: £2.75
1 x 'Lead Us Not Into Trent Station' to USA: £4.50

Published 2003. A5 paperback, 196 pages, 19 illustrations. ISBN 0-9545587-0-7.

For sale at: Heaps, College St PO (both Long Eaton), Erewash Museum (Ilkeston), Ottaker's, The Book Co, Loughborough Echo office (all Loughborough), amazon.co.uk