I used to be a woodwork instructor in a secure unit. In those days you could do a lot more with kids than you can now. In one lesson i had a lady who was helping me to supervise and I was trying to explain as simply as I could to this lad, how to measure certain things. And he couldn’t figure it out. I went over it over and over again. And at one point I said to him ‘You’re not as thick as two short planks are you?’ And after the lesson the lady who’d been supervising took a bit of umbrage to the way I talked to the lad. Telling him he’s as thick as two short planks. And I thought, well that’s how I speak to the kids. And anyhow, the lad wasn’t upset. He had a bit of a laugh about it.

And we had other little instances where the building instructor and the painting and decorating instructor they were having a little bit of fun with the kids by saying to one of them ‘Oh, go and see Mr Brown and ask him for a bubble for a spirit level.’ And of course the lad would go. Or the other one ‘Oh, go see Mr Lister and ask him for a long stand.’ And the lad would do it. And in those days you could do that with the kids. But now that wouldn’t be PC. You couldn’t do that. And, you know, it was little things like that that you remember.

I was at one school, this was when I first started teaching, I was a metalwork teacher. Was in Dewsbury. Thornhill. And there were two lads who were a little bit hard to handle. Anyway one lad, and I’m doing metalwork at the time, he decided it would be a bit of fun to get inside the coal bunker. It was a little metal thing. Small enough for a kid to get in. I’d seen him do this so I put a little bolt against the ring. Anyway we went to break time. I was having a cup of tea and there was a knock at the door ‘Mr Johnson, will you come and let Kilkenny out of the coal bunker?’ ‘Alright…’ He didn’t do it again.

You wouldn’t be able to do that nowadays.

And anyhow, when I was teaching, what, 70s, 80s, 90s, it was an enjoyable profession. My heart goes out to teachers now. All the paperwork and that. You had good times. You enjoyed the teaching.