Bill or Big G
Mr. Grant was a superb teacher and on the whole quite sane, which was unusual for our school. He was our English Teacher and the library custodian; he guarded his books like the beefeaters guard the Tower of London.
He had the knack of throwing library cards across the classroom, which if you were not ready could cause serious damage. He was a very smart gentleman and wore middle class tweed suits and crisp light checked shirts and highly polished brogues with metal segs in the soles.
He used to love passing the school bell outside the stairs and finding boys who were placed there under punishment for some misdemeanor, usually for dropping a pencil in Mr. Hayes? class or some other lame excuse to throw you out of the class. Whilst in this position any master or prefect could do whatever he wanted with you as further punishment. Mr. Grant would come walking up to you and move his glasses to he side of his face a la Morcambe and Wise and call you some strange name such as mine which was Bim, a connotation of my name in school Bill, as he approached you he would be smiling inanely with his glasses skew-wif on his face and he would then divert your attention by pointing out of the window and when you took your eyes off him, he would swipe you around the head, thus satisfied he would retreat to his library up the stairs to the first floor. Although you were smarting at the pain, you knew that there was no malice intended and all would be forgotten thereafter.
I remember one incident down at the St Thomas? school annex when John Stewart upset him and after Mr. Grant gave him the cursory swipe round the ear, John retaliated and attempted to hit him back ? big mistake. Mr. Grant made short work of John and threw him out of the class and locked the door. John left the building only to reappear at the upstairs windows to throw massive grass sods at him from Longwestgate. I can?t remember how it finished off but needless to say Bill Grant would have got the upper hand.
He was such a good teacher and really brought the best out of us. I remember one time he told us to write a poem about the old Boston Tea Race for a competition in a national newspaper. I used my brain and got an old book and studied the terms in the glossary of the book and made up a poem based on these old nautical terms. I named the poem The Liverpool Missy, believe it or not I actually won a prize from the newspaper and my poem was published in the national newspaper. What did I get for my efforts? A smack round the head from Bill Grant, he was convinced I had copied the poem from some old sea book and spent the next 2 weeks combing his extensive library trying to find the poem.
His good English teaching backfired on him, I wrote a letter to the Scarborough Evening News complaining about our toilets at the St Thomas? School annex, they were in fact converted Dovecotes and stank horribly in the summer and froze up in the winter. I did such a good job of the editorial that I was offered a job when I left school and even Miss Briggs (The Graham School Head), had me summoned to her office to congratulate me on my perfect English grammar.
Yes you guessed it I got the cane for bringing the name of the school into disrepute.
He loved Cricket and would regularly hold our lessons in the Library where he had a television and would watch Yorkshire play county games on TV with us.
Mr. Grant lived down the peaseholm area where he and his sisters owned a hotel I think it was called Glenavon or something like that. I made a huge mistake one Christmas by carol singing in that area, when he opened the door I froze.
The next day I was given my just rewards for singing to the glory of our lord on this holiday period, you guessed it, a swipe around the head from Bill Grant.