School days - Peter Symonds 3

Be warned - you might find this blog boring! I found some school reports and other memorabilia:

Apparently my first form was 1c and not 1b as I said in an earlier blog. But later on I was transferred to the 'b' stream. The form master and maths teacher "PWG" is Mr Gale, aka Breezy.  Note the lie "good" for history!  So as not to ultimately bore I omit the intermediate reports so here is the last:

I may have mentioned that I grew up in a Christian home.  Naturally I rebelled against this for a part of my teenage years so was apostate in my 5th year when I was approached by an older boy who was apparently the leader of the C.U.  He was about to graduate, and had somehow found out my credentials so informed me that there was no-one else and if I didn't rise to the challenge the C.U. would cease to exist.  My days of apostasy were numbered.  Starting with about 2 people, we learnt the hard way (after half a year of drudgery) about prayer. That is another story - for now let this C.U. report (my typewriter!) suffice:

Of particular interest (well to me) is the entry "Pot or Not" - after meetings with attendance of 2 or 3, this talk attracted perhaps 30 or 40 boys!  I remember making a large psychedelic poster for the occasion.  Also the outing to hear the "Forerunners", a gospel music group who did, amongst other tracks no doubt,  a very passable rendition of "Bridge over troubled water" and thus introduced me to S&G.  I instantly loved this track but until then I had never heard of S&G (my parents did not approve of popular music).  It took a younger boy to identify the original artist after the event.  And note the proud comment that the Head (Ashurst) was "happy".

My last boring picture is of an invention of mine.  I developed my "musical slide-rule" whilst in my 5th year to help me with music theory for O-level.  Readers who are ignorant about the slide-rule check here. The version, for which the image shown is a template, was a revised version which dealt with the C# / Db ambiguity.  In construction the lower image is taped around some plastic tube (waste pipe) and the upper part is photocopied onto clear acetate and wound around the tube and taped so that it can both slide length-ways and be rotated.  The device calculates the correct notes of any major or minor scale, the key signature of same, and calculates the correct name for the interval between two arbitrary notes.  The design is, of course, copyrighted.