The 'Houses' of my School

I have little recollection of my time at primary school, whether in the infants or juniors, which feels like a century ago, but I do remember a fair amount of my years at secondary school (which nevertheless also feels like a century ago). 

One of the features that really stands out about my secondary school was the five 'houses' of allegiance into which the pupils were divided. Each of these houses was headed by its own Master who usually presided over the morning house assemblies (always religious) that took place there 3 to 4 times a week, when there was no general assembly in the main hall taken by the Headmaster or Deputy Head Master (these titles had not yet been changed to the new genderless title of 'head teacher' for political correctness). 

The names and associated colours of the various houses were as follows:-

Brunel (blue): Named after Isambard Kingdom Brunel (9 April 1806 – 15 September 1859), the English mechanical and civil engineer who built bridges and dockyards, the Great Western Railway, a series of steamships including the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship and numerous important bridges and tunnels. His designs revolutionised public transport and modern engineering.



Fleming (green): Named after Sir Alexander Fleming (6 August 1881 – 11 March 1955) a Scottish biologist, pharmacologist and botanist. His best-known discoveries are the enzyme lysozyme in 1923 and the antibiotic substance penicillin in 1928, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain. He also wrote many penetrating articles on bacteriology, immunology, and chemotherapy.


Rutherford (red): Named after Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937), a New Zealand-born British chemist and physicist who became known as the father of nuclear physics. He is considered the greatest experimentalist since Michael Faraday (1791–1867). He did a lot more besides and his accomplishments and accolades were considerable, but what's more to the point here is that this was the House I was allocated to when I was admitted to the school and I stayed there right to the end. And after all these years I still recall the name of my House Master, one Wynn Owen, a true-blue Welshman of impeccable morals (though this did not stop him from using corporal punishment on his young charges, a common practice in those days).


Stephenson (yellow): Named after George Stephenson (9 June 1781 – 12 August 1848), an  English civil engineer and mechanical engineer who built the first public railway line in the world to use steam locomotives. Renowned as being the "Father of Railways", the  Victorians considered him a great example of diligent application and thirst for improvement. His rail gauge of 4 feet 8¹⁄₂ inches (1,435 mm), sometimes called "Stephenson gauge", is the world's standard gauge.

Telford (white): Named after Thomas Telford (1757–1834), a Scottish civil engineer, architect and stonemason, and a noted road, bridge and canal builder. He designed numerous infrastructure projects in his native Scotland, as well as harbours and tunnels. Such was his reputation as a prolific designer of highways and bridges, he was dubbed The Colossus of Roads, and in the early 19th century, he was elected as the first President of the Institution of Civil Engineers.



These were the Houses of allegiance at my school and to indicate our respective House we wore the appropriately coloured ribbon sewn across the top of our blazer pocket which bore the emblem or badge of our school. At the time I had little idea who were the men after whom the Houses were named, not because we hadn't been told but because we paid scant attention to such things at our young age. Now of course I see things differently and, having watched many tv documentaries on great men of the past, I know more about them and my curiosity has been awakened, for these were great men indeed who changed the face of our world with their discoveries, inventions and creations. 

I'm glad that my school chose great men of science and technology to represent our 'Houses', worthy men dedicated to their specialist field, men with a vision, men who revolutionised our lives and our surroundings, men who put Britain squarely on the map of greatness. But that was then, and this is now, and today endless fawning adulation is lavished on pop idols, piss artists, footballers and shallow celebrities who love to love themselves and be loved by everyone. So perhaps today the school's houses of allegiance would be given the names of media celebrities, overpaid footballers and movie stars instead of truly great men of inquiry and dedication to a cause higher than themselves. Times have certainly changed.

Children rule, ok?

Have you noticed lately how everyone seems to be getting younger while you're getting older with every passing day if not minute? Well, when I say everyone, I’m really referring here to all those in positions of authority or responsibility, some of them in the highest offices of state.

Some of the worst 'culprits' are teachers and police officers, members of parliament and local councillors, doctors, lawyers, heads of corporations, tv newsreaders and weather people, celebrity scientists and historians, company managers and directors, and even pensioners, and the list just goes on and on.

On comes someone on the television who has 'doctor' or 'professor' in front of his name, talking knowledgeably and authoritatively about a subject, and you can’t believe your ears and eyes. Is this fresh-faced spring chicken of a youth old enough to be a doctor or professor?, you ask yourself. Apparently yes. After all, he’s on the telly spouting off about scientific phenomena or historical events and seems to know what he’s talking about. And yet when you were already entering middle age, with a nagging wife and a bevy of hell-raising sprogs, he was still in short trousers sucking on lollipops! And now he’s a doctor of science, a professor of everything, and disseminating his wisdom to you, me and the rest of the world.

Similarly, this girlie-whirlie comes on and holds forth about matters geological and anthropological and other such ologicals and, lo and behold, just as you’re thinking she’s too young to be out of school at that time of day, you discover she’s… you guessed it, another doctor or professor! Well, I never! When did she have the time to graduate, let alone postgraduate? Or has she been using some miraculous anti-ageing cream?

Experts are invited onto night-time discussion programmes to enlighten and pontificate on this matter or that, this weighty issue or that, and you wonder if their mothers know they’re out so late. You listen enthralled at the amount of knowledge they have accumulated and can’t understand why you didn’t know one quarter of that when you were their age? But what is their age in fact? Are they out of their teens? Must be in their twenties at least, or even thirties. Surely? And they seem to know what they’re talking about, if anyone can in these days of limitless information.

The worst offender of all is of course the Prime Minister or President of your country. Once upon a time a national leader looked the part and had the years behind him to lend him some gravitas. Now they look so boyish (or girlish) that you ask yourself when they had the time to rise to such a high office so early in life. Did they take some sort of short-cut to the top? Or have they drunk from some fountain of youth? Or made a Faustian pact with the devil? It hardly seems that it was so long ago that they were still at school and yet here they are now running a country and bossing everyone around, including those who remember them as snotty-nosed schoolboys. Where was Barack Obama when I was losing my sexual virginity? Nowhere! Yet now he is president of Uncle Sam and presumes to command the world from his Oval Office. And where am I now? Nowhere!

The other week I opened the door to two policewomen (advising on home security) who looked as though they had played truant from their school and donned fancy-dress! But no, they were the real thing apparently, and I tried concentrating on what they were saying whilst thinking I had children of their age or even older than them! Two rosy-cheeked damsels, with skin as smooth as a baby’s bottom, and here they were in front of me in police uniform representing law and order. How much younger can they get before we demand to see proof of adulthood?

You see teachers at secondary school and you can only distinguish them from a lot of their pupils and students by the fact they’re stood at the front of the class behaving like teachers are expected to. As soon as they mingle with their charges in the corridors or the playground you have difficulty in picking them out from the real youngsters! No wonder their pupils are so familiar and laid-back with them and give them lip. The age gap between the pupil and teacher has narrowed so much that it's eaten away at any air of authority they might have had and this is often reflected in the way the pupils interact with the baby-faced teacher.

And so the years pass by and you’re showing unmistakable signs of ageing, but not so with the aforementioned persons in authority who just go on getting younger and younger, a bit like Brad Pitt in the movie “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, who is born old but after “growing up” begins to regress, getting younger and younger until he finally reverts to babyhood and dies! Can this be happening in real life with people in authority? Will our Premier or President one day parade in a romper suit before us, drooling at the mouth and gurgling incoherently? Is it possible? Or will a law finally come out forbidding anyone under 10 years of age to become Prime Minister or a High Court Judge? I rather hope so.

I recall a time when the average MP looked as though he was on his last legs, such was the burden of his advanced years. Old and frail and wizened by time, he shuffled about like a true wrinkly not long for this world. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at some 1940s/1950s footage of MPs debating in the House of Commons and see if you can spot anyone there who does not look like a geriatric case! And why do you think that august body, the Senate, which still exists in the USA, is called the 'Senate'? From the Latin ‘senex’, meaning ‘old’, it was an organ of government composed of grand old men, many of them bearded and moustachioed and pot-bellied looking just about ready to be shipped off to the knackers’ yard! Now their modern counterparts look like a band of delinquent students indulging in schoolboy antics.

Well, I suppose I may have betrayed my age with all this ranting and raging against the reign of the young and the youthful. In fact, it may be that the said people in authority and on the goggle-box are not so young after all, but rather that we’re so old! And the older we get, the younger they and everyone else looks. That may be the terrible truth and the word that dare not speak its name: s*n*l*t*!

Now where’s that blesséd  rejuvenating cream of mine?