Happy Days – The Neglected Nineties
Ross Crombie tells all
We went to a pokey wee comprehensive school in west Edinburgh that was always having building work done and fights up the back gate with young ‘clerrie derry’ or suspended casual nutters. It appears to me that the Eighties are a forgotten era in RHSCL, it was a good school with brilliant and encouraging teachers, plagued by strikes and the work to rule, a rector who was never there but a ‘stuff it’ we’ll make the best of a crappy lot out of it attitude. I generally feel that the benefit of our education was that we were as good as the private sector but we never had to cow down to the ‘my daddy owns Belgium, where do you live, you oik?’ mentality. It would be nice to meet up with people who have a roughly similar attitude and background, and I hope this could be possible. It is just that the website(s) for the High are, to a visitor, a bit ‘hockey sticks’ and girls in ballgowns! I am a professional funeral director in London, so you needn’t worry that I would turn up with a dog on a string or anything; it is just that I am a wee bit shocked – everyone in the photos and web stuff looks like a candidate for ‘The Apprentice’ and as a once radical school it’s a wee bit scary.
I WENT TO THE ROYAL HIGH SCHOOL FROM 1976- 1980, AND LIKE MANY FROM CLERMISTON LOVED THE SCHOOL,BUT THE SCHOOL DIDNT LOVE US, OR FOR THAT MATTER WANT US. THERE WAS NO PASSING THROUGH THAT FAMOUS OLD DOOR, WHEN I LEFT IT WAS OVER THE FENCE AND GOODBYE.
EVEN ENTRY TO THE SCHOOL FROM CLERMISTON WAS MADE AS DIFFICULT AS POSSIBLE, NO GATE , JUST CLIMB THE WALL, SOME OF THE TEACHERS DURING MY TIME, WERE FROM A PREHISTORIC AGE OF SCHOOL FEES AND ELITISM, THEY HAD A PRECONCEPTION OF THE PUPILS FROM CLERMISTON, THEY DIDNT WANT CHANGE AND NEVER HID THE THEIR RESENTMENT.
SO THOUGH I HAD SUCH A GOOD TIME AT SCHOOL , IT WASNT DOWN TO THE DINOSAURS LIKE ,MR MURRAY, MISS GARVIE,MR MITCHELL, MISS URHQUART, OR MR SIMMONS.
TO THIS DAY MYSELF ,AND MANY OF THE PEOPLE I WENT TO SCHOOL WITH , THAT WERE FROM CLERMISTON, HAVE NEVER BEEN TO RHS FPs DINNER DANCE OR CLUB, IS THIS SIMPLY BECAUSE WE HAVENT JOINED “the club” OR BECAUSE WE CAME FROM CLERMISTON.
IF IM WRONG , PLEASE LET ME KNOW, VIVAS SCHOLA REGIA
Steven Marr’s comment has been incorporated in to ‘Happy Days – The Seventies’ along with John Burns recollections from 1970 to 1975.