I had been interested in bird watching from the age of about eleven so it followed me to THS. For reasons I can’t now recall, I was allowed to form an Ornithological Club to meet after school and the only teacher who regularly came along was Elwyn Matthews.
As the Club grew, we organised coach trips to Peter Scott’s Wildfowl Trust at Slimbridge in Gloucestershire visiting a roman villa at Chedworth en-route. But most outings were much more local and often on a Saturday morning we would rendezvous at any one of a number of places; Ravensthorpe and Hollowell reservoirs, Pitsford or Harlestone Firs for a mornings birding. Elwyn would frequently be there too and although he didn’t quite have the birding knowledge of some of us, he was enthusiastic.
Of
course we had to cycle to these venues, but Elwyn had a Moped – if you
don’t know what that is, it will be difficult to describe but it was
like a glorified motorised bicycle. On one occasion, we wanted to move a
few hundred yards to another location which wasn’t not far enough away
to start up the moped, so he began to push it talking to me as I pushed
my bike. They were heavy machines and after a while, out of breath he
stopped and said to me in his Welsh accent, “Roger, I’ll have to get my
breath back”. I stopped too and saw him take a packet of cigarettes from
his coat. I smoked on and off by this time but wouldn’t dare take mine
out in front of ‘sir’. But I didn’t have to, because with no hesitation
he pushed the packet towards me and said, “Want a fag?”. “Thanks sir” I
said and soon after lighting up off we went. He also helped me get more
books on Ornithology for the school library but before I left, he had
moved on to Cliftonville school.
A year or so later in preparing to find a job, I found myself talking with Bimbo Bennett who was our Careers Master. “Know what you want to do then?” he asked. “Yes sir, I want to be a Warden on a bird reserve”. I still remember Bimbo’s reply; “You had better go away and come back next week with something sensible”. But the next week I gave the same answer only to be told to be serious and study the list of options the school had been provided with. I told him a third time that I wanted to be warden and finally he came up with the requirements I would need which were either a degree, or enough O and A levels to go to university to get one. So I took an apprenticeship in engineering at the Northampton Machinery Co. It was a mighty contrast to my aspirations, but I got on well with Bimbo and felt he would help me if he could.