I remember William Golding as the teacher above all others who made us think for ourselves. Part of the S.H.E. lessons he taught us, involved us all giving a talk to the class on any subject, a terrifying ordeal. I spoke about a holiday I had had in Italy and mentioned how impressed I had been with the quality and immense variety of Italian ice-cream. It was not all that long after the war and it was still not the fashion to praise anything Italian. Several of my jaundiced critics implied that they did not think Italian ice-cream up to much. 'Scruff' then asked how many in the class had actually tasted it. The total being one, me, he emphasised the necessity for facts before making critical judgements. On Italian ice-cream they would just have to take my word for it.
There was a craze for playing chess that year and anyone who was anybody carried a pocket chess set. 'Scruff' challenged to take us all on. So around fifteen of us laid out our sets in room F (the one next to the Chapel). The opening moves were all the same, a great strain for me who always liked to be different. I did do something different and was the first to lose my Queen. Unfortunately as with many top chess games time ran out before any of the games concluded but we were certainly impressed with Mr Golding's chess skills.
'Scruff' did tend to live in a world of his own. I remember we slogged through one of the creeds in R.I. (Religious Instruction) for six weeks only for him to come in and say he was sorry but it was the wrong one. It says a lot for his integrity that he admitted it to us; many teachers would have just carried on and told us nothing.
He became the Senior Officer of our naval Combined Cadet Force and used to take us sailing down the Solent in our 27 foot whaler. He used to forget to bring adequate rations for himself and his son and had to cadge from the rest of us. I remember trying to sleep on a PRIVATE pebble beach one night when we were becalmed miles from base and 'Scruff' thumbing a tow from a motor boat when we were caught miles downstream late on a Sunday night. The cold, the rain, the blistered hands from rowing, the seasickness and sheer terror in the gales, that was the life.
My fellow cadets and I can thank 'Scruff', and the two other Masters devoted enough to run the cadets, for a lot of happy days and character forming experiences. Once we formed up on parade and a 'shady character' came up unexpectedly and knocked his hat off to our shocked amusement. This was a ploy to test our powers of observation as we had to describe the assailant as if for being a court witness.
He was not afraid of a joke against himself, the classic being when he told us that the word barbarian meant a man with a beard. Recent photographs of him show him little different from when I knew him apart from the colouring of the beard.
He was a devout Christian but had to teach us the histories of the other main religions. I well remember him saying that he thought the Christian Heaven sitting contemplating God's creation was better than the Islamic Paradise. Surely having all the houris and every known luxury would get boring after the first hundred thousand years! He did encourage us to hold philosophical discussions and these were his inspiration for Lord of the Flies as extreme political positions were certainly produced in the discussions.
My school nickname was Simon after Simon de Montfort and I have always suspected that I was the role model for the unfortunate Simon killed in Lord of the Flies not least for the not too flattering report he wrote about me: "Never a leader, always an independent individualist". I have strong suspicions about some of the other characters as well. In a quiet period he actually read us the start of the book which he was still working on. Anything rather than schoolwork would have gone down well but this really did catch our imaginations.
Click here to go back to Sir William Golding's page.
Click here to go back to Salisbury Plaques Home Page.
Click here to go to the Salisbury Civic Society's Home Page.
Click here to check validation.