Mr Milward Metalwork teacher - Kenny - Chalky - Milly
Mr. Milward was one of the oddest men I have ever met, and I am sure the majority of students will agree. He had some of the strangest habits, his tongue used to dart out periodically from the right side of his mouth.
Whilst teaching us Technical Drawing he used to get so excited about his subject that clouds of chalk dust covered his clothes and hid him from view to the rest of the class. It is fair to say that he had absolutely no control over us whatsoever, although he had many idiosyncrasies he was also quite a nice man, although much to his loss his mental state left a lot to be desired, and he had limited control over his emotions. Apart from all this he was actually a quite good teacher, and a brilliant engineer, I remember him actually making a micrometer in metalwork.

He was the brunt of many a practical joke played on him by the students of GST, I remember somebody ordered a large amount of cream cakes from Woodheads Bakery, took delivery in the boatyard and promptly scoffed the lot and sent the delivery man up to the staff room with the bill. When Milly returned with him all the cakes were gone.

On another occasion somebody else ordered a brake-down truck to take his car away from the car-park up near Anne Brontes grave, it was hilarious watching Milly running down castle road chasing his green Ford Popular.

We once stole a micrometer from his metalwork class up at Graham School, when he brough Mr Clifford up to seach our pockets, somebody had a mouse trap in their jacket pocket, Milly was not impressed when it shut closed on his fingers.

He got so much stick in Metalwork class, every lesson something would happen, Goodall would wait until Mr Milward was until a vital part on the lathe was coming, something Milly was very good at, and then at the last minute would either turn the power off, or speed the lathe up, ruining his work, and God helped him if he went out to the toilet in the middle of a lesson.

I would like to say that he had a lot of patience but it would not be true, he was different to the other teachers who would resort to violence, he would just have a nervous breakdown periodically.

The most famous incidence as far as our class is concerned relates to our classmate Ian Woolley, the following relates to this fateful day in our schools history as I remember it.

We were having a Technical drawing lesson from Mr. Milward, he was in his usual trance, he completely ignored us and went about frantically drawing engineering blueprints on the blackboard, his tongue was darting out to his right cheek and clouds of dust all but hid him from our view, and his clothes were covered in chalk.

We as usual were messing about behind him and Ian Woolley was attempting to twist Neil Kay?s ears off his head, Neil screamed in pain and Milly turned around to see what was going on, he normally would throw the  blackboard rubber at us for messing around but in his right hand this time he had a blackboard set-square, almost 3 feet long and made from solid wood.
He let the set-square go and it flew through the air like an Greek Olympian?s Javelin, but this time in slow-motion. Woolley turned round and the set-square buried itself in his forhead between his skull and his scalp, blood started to gush out and in retaliation Ian grabbed the first thing to hand, a compass, used for drawing circles and launched it at Mr Milward at the front of the class.
As Mr Milward ducked and the compass impaled itself into the blackboard with a loud twang, who should come into the class but our headmaster Mr Herbert. He stopped in his tracks, and quickly looked around.

"What the hell is going on"?
Shrieked the headmaster.
"It was Woolleys fault you can ask the other boys"
As if he could get support from us after almost killing one of our own!!
"Mr Milward threw it at him for nothing"  We all replied.
" Threw it at him for nothing, are you a bloody idiot"?
"No you're the bloody idiot for listening to these bloody idiots"
Said Mr Milward.

With this Mr Herbert lost his composure and flew at Mr Milward and punched him right in the stomach, in front of our classroom in view of all the class.
Mr. Milward buckling under the pain to his solar plexus, on his way down, grabbed onto Mr. Herberts leg, or lack of leg, and grabbed his prosphetic on the way down. Mr Herbert fearing that if his leg came off he would not be able to replace it in a hurry due to the fact that it was made from solid oak, fell down with him and they both scrambled to the floor and carried on scuffling.
"FIght, Fight"
We all shouted hooting for joy, and stood all around them watching this amazing spectacle.
Hearing this noise from the corridor, Mr. Jack Ripon came into the classroom quickly followed by Mr. Bill Grant who grabbed both masters and extracted them still kicking from the classroom to the staff room. The school sent for a nurse and she took Woolley away.
Amazing scenes, never to be repeated again?
Wrong they started up again at lunch.
Just another day at Graham Sea Training.....

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