The slick salesman who resides in Woodhedge Road's immaculate corner prefab is in pole position in the race for top prestige position on our estate. This financial colossus does not just have a telephone - he has a Ford Popular car and a television set as well. The only 'triple crown' on the estate! An entire squad of post office engineers had to be dispatched to put a telephone pole up for him! (Which makes it 'pole' position twice over.)
Recently the slick salesman's son won a scholastic 'gold' (a place at the grammar school) after sailing through the eleven plus examination. Currently our estate has secured two 'golds', two 'silvers' (places at the technical school), and six 'bronzes' (places at one of the two secondary modern schools). This Darwinian struggle can be a cruel business with some friendships being broken. Being told you are only worth a 'bronze' (or even a 'silver') when you are eleven year olds is a downer. We all went to the same primary school, so why do the rules change when we go to a secondary school? The response of the slick salesman in the immaculate corner prefab is that "the Swileys would drag standards down and - before you know it - western civilization would hit the rocks." (The Swileys came within three yards of overhearing this. If they had the slick salesman's immaculate corner prefab would have been immaculate no more).
A letter from Dai 'Tolstoy' Lectic published in the Bath & Wilting Chronicle claimed that
children from well-off families who failed the eleven plus were able to leap-frog their way into private schools. "The kids from this prefab estate who fail the exam have to grin and bare it and make do with East Hill or Weymouth House!" This provoked a barrage of letters (oddly enough they were all from people called Waugh) which all used the phrase "self-pitying hogwash!" Prefab estates like ours were said to be "awash" with bursaries and generous scholarships to leading public schools. "I know for a fact that the upper-sixth at Winchester is infested with former former prefab-dwellers from Twiverton!" wrote one junior Waugh.
Len Flanders lives in one of the council houses in Shores Way that were built (the residents have yet to be told of this) on top of a disused coal mine. Pinned up on his bedroom wall is the Certificate of Education (CSE) he was awarded at East Hill secondary modern. He calls it "the poor man's consolation prize."
The other day, quite out of the blue, just as we walked by the My Full Moon public house, he hurled a bitter and unwarranted canard at me: "You and that 'Tubby' Lard only mix with grammar and tech school types!" When I mentioned this to Dai 'Tolstoy' Lectic he said that
"even mundane fields of social interaction such as your own have been penetrated by the dominant form of ideological discourse!" (I was not quite sure how to take this).
At least you get driving lessons at East Hill Secondary Modern. Those of us drafted into Weymouth House Technical School (1873-1973) have to endure the most creepy woodwork lessons that have ever been invented.