In our frenetic,
24 hour news, hyperbola filled world the quest for the next big story to fill
our newspapers, TV screens, social media platforms and, thus, our hearts and
minds, is only nanoseconds away. In bygone days there was truth in the saying
that today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip paper but today mobile phones,
social media, online browsing and the instant gratification of the internet
mean that we can satisfy our urge for continual titillation, stimulation and
trepidation each and every waking minute. Whether it be packs of pit bull
terriers, rampant rapists, parades of paedophiles, invasions of immigrants,
mobs of Muslim terrorists, streets full
of stressed student snowflakes or a
pandemic threatening the population of the planet the reason and result is the
same; humanity constantly seeks the four
horsemen of the apocalypse to sate its drug like desire for a fresh vertiginous
high and to occupy its anxious and angst addled attention. For the past year plus it has been the
ghoul like Pestilence, in the guise of the Covid pandemic, who has ridden rough shod through our manic media and our
worst nightmares and wildest imaginings.
 |
The synagogue where we sat taking in all that
Mr Parkin, the Colonel, had to offer. Our "classoom" was
at the rear of the synagogue on the extreme left of the
picture - we looked out through the two upstairs windows. |
But as the media
maelstrom rages and the destruction of society as we know it looms I find my
mind wandering to another age, a life time ago when I first heard the word
“pandemic”. Whenever I hear or read it even today, I do not initially imagine
some dreadful plague spreading and laying waste to my family and friends but
instead think of "the history man", or “the Colonel” as we callow teenagers secretly
called him; a man who opened up a world for me and without any doubt changed my
life.
He sat opposite
me first one early summer evening in 1963 in a room above the United Hebrew
Synagogue in Leamington Road Blackpool. When I left school I became a trainee
draughtsman at a Preston engineering company but having obtained my ONC – the
baseline qualification for my work – the small company for which I worked
closed its Preston office and I was offered the opportunity of moving, with the
company, to its head office in the midlands but at that time I was unsure about
leaving my home town. I also knew that if I was to progress in that line of
work I would need to get further qualifications – an HNC and then an AMIMech.E
- and I wasn’t sure that this was where my future lay. The result was that,
after much thought, I decided to follow another path – one that I had often
considered – namely to go into teaching. So, I made enquiries and eventually
found myself invited for an interview with a view to studying for A levels, in
order to gain entrance to a teacher training college. That was why I sat above
a synagogue in Blackpool that night – being interviewed for a place on the A
level course at Blackpool Technical College and School of Art.
Blackpool “Tech”
in the 1960s was a huge and highly respected establishment catering for a vast
range of students and qualifications from technical/industrial to commercial,
to fine art, to GCE and A level subjects and especially catering and hotel
management – for which it was internationally acclaimed. Its many departments were
spread throughout Blackpool and the A level “arts” subjects were based in what
had once been the old Blackpool Grammar School on Raikes Parade. More or less
adjacent was the Jewish synagogue on Leamington Road. The College rented two
or three rooms above the Synagogue as private study rooms for the A level
students and for administrative use by A level staff, and it was there where I
sat that summer evening.
The “Colonel”
was Alan Parkin who, as well as teaching A level history was in charge of A level
studies. He was a quietly spoken, pleasant, middle aged man who I immediately
took a liking to and at the end of the interview he offered me a place to study
history, geography and economics. I had passed a geography O level at school
and enjoyed all things historical but had not studied either history or
economics before and so as I left to catch the bus back to Preston, Mr Parkin
gave me reading lists for all three subjects with the advice that I should
prepare as much as possible before starting in September. It was the first of many good bits of advice
that he gave – and I will be forever thankful for it. Many of the students, he
explained, would be straight from school and would have studied these subjects
before so I needed to put in a bit of work
if I was to keep up with them. When September came I discovered that he
was right – several in the group had already passed A levels at their schools
but were doing the course and exam again at Blackpool Tech. to get better
grades in order to get into top universities.
I was very much the plodder but as I walked out of the synagogue that
night clutching my reading lists it wasn’t anxiety I felt but a real buzz – it
was something new to look forward to, a new start, perhaps a new life, and I
couldn’t wait to get started.
That summer was
one of the happiest of my life. I bought most of the books on the list and
spent day after day at home, in the local park or most often in the town
library reading and making notes, following Mr Parkin’s guidelines to the
letter. Local authorities in those days awarded grants (remember them!) to
students and I got a grant for books plus something towards my basic living
costs and the payment of college fees. I also had some savings from my work as
a draughtsman which helped but mostly I lived off the pockets and good will of
my parents, a thing for which I will be forever grateful as they were not well
off and my studying must have been at some considerable cost to their own lives
and ambitions.
And so September
came. An early morning bus to Blackpool each day meant that I was always
sitting above the synagogue before eight working at my latest essay, or reading
up on some piece of history or economics or geography; it wouldn’t be untrue to
say I was in heaven! The work was hard but every evening as I sat on the
Preston bound bus I felt that an exciting door had been opened for me.
For the next two
years, as our history teacher and the man in charge of A levels, Alan Parkin
was our guide, mentor and assessor. I can still see him today standing in front
of our motley group of would be teenage historians in his tweed jacket and grey
trousers with knife edge creases – his demeanour unapologetically professional
and very correct. His blue striped regimental tie, shining brown leather shoes, quiet
voice and precise spoken English gave him an old fashioned authority and marked
him out as someone to respect. Each lunchtime, as we brash teenagers sipped our
coffee in sea front coffee bars, the juke box blasting out the Beatles, the
Stones, Roy Orbison or Cilla Black it wasn’t long before the colonel featured
in our conversations. It was Les Levett who had first coined the nickname “the Colonel” and it stuck; it made complete sense. Mr Parkin’s clipped speech,
upright stance, short cropped hair, dead
straight parting and grey pencil moustache gave him a military bearing and
encouraged us all in the belief that he was an ex-officer - a conclusion that
proved correct when he told us of his war time experiences in Germany when we
studied the rise of Hitler.
Alan Parkin –
both visually and in the way he taught had “presence”. He did not praise often
or easily but praised well when it was merited. We quietly mocked his clipped
speech and his outward formality but we all respected him hugely both for what
he gave us and how he gave it. He didn’t set out to impress but even to us
rebellious sixties teenagers he did. He had high expectations of himself and
the way he presented to the world and made it clear that he had high
expectations of us – referring to us always as “ladies and gentlemen”, as Mr
Beale, Miss Hudson, Mr Levett or Miss Williams. Above all he gave time and was
ever aware of individual students – asking, as he passed us in a corridor how
things were going, how had we found a particular essay or piece of reading,
could he help with any applications for college or university – and like all
good teachers he made you feel good and the best, even when you knew that you
weren’t. Ask a question in lesson and he could make it sound as if you had
asked the most important question in the world when really you were just
showing your own dismal ignorance. And it is here where I come back to
“pandemic”!
As, one day, we
studied the origins of the First World War, the Colonel, upright, soldier like,
chalk in his hand was briskly explaining to us the many interwoven causes of
that terrible conflict. We sat scribbling notes in our files – me hoping that I
would be able to make sense of them later on the homeward bound bus that night!
As I scribbled, Mr Parkin began to talk of the 19th century
pan-Slavic and pan-Germanic movements and my pen stopped in mid-scribble. Hesitantly I put up
my hand to ask what he meant – feeling that I must be the only one in the room
that didn’t understand (I wasn’t!). The colonel stopped and without speaking
wrote on the blackboard:”pan-Slavic, pan-Germanic, pandemonium, pantheon,
pandemic, panarchy, panacea, pancratic, panistocracy......” and so the list
went on and on. “Mr Beale”, he asked “what do you notice about all the words” –
the answer being obvious. He then asked if anyone knew what any of the words
meant. There was a sound of pocket
dictionaries being hurriedly dug out of bags and flicked through. Eventually a
couple of hands went up and without actually telling us, pied piper like, he brought us to the point
where we came to understand that the prefix “pan” meant “all”. Slowly, but
surely, the Colonel prodded our wits, put two and two together, so that we
gradually came to understand these linked words: a utopian government where all
rule equally; all the German speaking peoples; a cure for all; a temple for all
the gods; a row of all the demons let loose; the rule of all..............and
of course, pandemic: a disease across all the world.
When the time
came, in 1964, for me to apply for teacher training college he supplied me with
prospectuses and suggested that I apply to Nottingham as my first choice. The
history man was not wrong and the rest, as they say, is history – my history. Without his support and guidance I would not
have left the Hebrew Synagogue two years later clutching my three scraped
through A levels. Without them and the Colonel I would not be sitting here in
Nottinghamshire today. In my own classroom career I often found myself thinking
of the Colonel: his mannerisms his military bearing, the respect he gave his
students, the way he presented himself each and every day. I never forgot the
green ink that he used in his fountain pen (he would have no truck with ball
points!) to mark our work, explaining that green ink was much less intimidating
and more respectful to a hard working student than “aggressive” red ink. Years
later this became government advice to teachers and I shook my head as I read
this “new idea” from the DfEE. The Colonel had been ahead of his time! Alan
Parkin was what we would call today a role model. He was one of those people
that one remembers for what they were and that is why now, almost 60 year
later, when I read each day of the pandemic threatening to sweep the world I think
back to that lesson so long ago when the Colonel opened another door for
me. And that seems a much more important
and worthy than the latest hyperbolic, apocalyptic media soundbite.
