This blog is used as a conduit to vent my spleen at this that and the other, and to reflect on events that go on in and around my life. Today I read something about someone I only very vaguely knew, but who actually, indirectly, cost me my first “job” as a Saturday worker in WH Smith’s in Eltham. The reason why I’m writing about is that he was the son of my Latin teacher (yes, Dmitri went to Public School) who my late mum and dad loved to talk to at Parent’s Evenings because he wasn’t the stuffed shirt that so many of the others were. I don’t know, I’m a silly fool, but I’d like to get back in touch with Stan Wolfson to just say how sorry I am and how sad I felt for him reading the story today.
We can get all nostalgic about our past life at school, but I don’t. I am not in touch in any permanent way with any old member of my school, because as one of those kids who was a little on the porky side, you were the brunt of some pretty wicked humour and I had a number of problems with that. When I got to University, and you were taken for who you were, not what you looked like, I found friends for life.
The school itself rated me only in the fair-to-middling bracket, but I outdid the expectations in the A Levels and was very proud of myself. One of the few teachers there that I really respected after I left was Stan Wolfson. He so loved his job, he so loved teaching the pupils the classics, and, yes I’m a saddo at heart, I remember the way he used to announce the end of year exam results – in reverse order. In the first year, form 3B I recall, I sat at my desk, in the middle of the room as befitting an near the middle of the alphabet surname (there’s a clue) in a seating plan arranged in alphabetical order, and awaited my name to be called out. 29 in class, I hoped to be top 5, because that’s about where I was finishing. 25,20,15,10,5 and the name still not called. 4..not me. 3…jesus, still not me…2….John Howard (I exhaled and went “yes” very audibly). I remember it because it was great that he, the most scary teacher because the guy just exuded authority, had marked me number 1.
Ah yes, school memories. But I owed Mr Wolfson so much more. I have always responded to a certain sort of authority figure. These are the people who have a real human side, without laying it on too thick, who actually come across as caring about how you do, rather than painting it on themselves, and who know their stuff. They make you do things to “please” them, to get their “praise” and you do it because you want them to be proud of what you do without taking the credit themselves, even though they deserve a lot of it. Stan was that to me.
One thing I was always incredibly proud of, and this is going to sound terribly sad, was my handwriting. Whenever I regularly used a pen (I’ve gone to pot a bit now), people always remarked about how neat my writing was – calling it “girly”. I wrote in very small letters, with very fine nibs, and I bemoan the fact that I can’t write that neatly any more, because I used to practice a lot. The reason I did practice, and make it into the neat ordered form it was, was because my Latin teacher once deducted me a ton of marks on a piece of homework for it being “utterly disgracefully written”. I had actually got 19/20 and he docked me 7 marks for tons of crossings outs, mistakes, and spider scrawl.
That was it, Stan made me change. Because (a) I’m competitive and hated losing marks for such nonsense and (b) I was embarrassed at my handwriting. I’d always been picked up on it. In my life I’ve been sufficiently determined to change very little, hence my weight, but that was one thing he did. No-one complained about my handwriting again. I was the school’s cricket scorer and even had the honour for scoring for the England Schools Cricket Association – South in a game against Kent U19. My scorecards were always pretty neat. I hope the school looked after them.
So why all this nostalgia?
I came across this horrible story.
I have no idea of the facts of the case. For anyone to pass any form of moral judgement on what happened on anything that is reported by local rags would be wrong. It is just too easy for something to be misunderstood, and it is too easy for the criminally guilty to pass off things as something normal. But I know the father, and I’ll bet an absolute fortune that the son was brought up in a proper way. I’d be stunned, from the upbringing, if this “offence” were at all true. I’d be stunned, but then again, the thing we don’t know, and never will, is what was in his son’s mind at the time. Only he really knows the truth.
I have to confess I came across Adrian one fateful Saturday afternoon with his father at WH Smith’s in Eltham. I had a Saturday job on the stationary counter and had been asked to do a full day’s shift as my colleague had gone on holiday and was off that day. I took the chance of some extra money. Halfway through a dull and boring Saturday afternoon, Stan came in with Adrian to buy a calculator. Little did I know the impact this would have. I sold Stan a lower priced calculator than the one they originally looked at as the functions on the first one weren’t really required for 3rd form maths, and by the time he needed them, the calculator market would have moved on. I couldn’t rip off my own Latin teacher, could I?
So they left… At the end of a long day the manager of Smith’s called me into his office. I was 15 at the time. “Dmitri” he said “We are going to have to let you go.” I was gobsmacked. “It is clear to me today that you are not a salesman.” he said. Well, hello, mate, I was only 15, it was only my second week, so what on earth was he on about. “I saw you sell that calculator today, and you did not sell him the one he wanted, rather a cheaper one.” I was still gobsmacked. Paul Smith was his name. I hope he’s rotted in hell. I left, crying like a baby, disgusted. My dear old mum did her usual when her little boy had been treated badly, and went in and tore him off a strip, but that was too late.
I am rambling a bit, but if by some amazing fluke, someone stumbles across this and has contact details for Stan Wolfson, who lives in Eltham (I can’t find any details through my old school’s website), please drop something in the comments box. I feel a bit embarrassed pursuing it through the school I want nothing to do with for reasons of my own, so if someone does know, and comes upon this, please do me this favour. I’m a bit sentimental at heart.
Stan – we run a book on who you’d call out to read first in class, and one day you cost me a mythical fortune by choosing the rank outsider. Stan – you made my mum and I build a replica model of a drill hall for Roman troops. Why? Stan, you used to make us all chuckle when you slagged off films like Ben Hur and Spartacus for their ”factual errors”. You were a top teacher, and some of us, out there, still hold a lot of fondness for their time in your presence.
