Memories – Part One By Elizabeth

Memories – Part One
By
Elizabeth Tindle (Baker)

I attended St. Oswald's Primary school but had a substantial break during my later primary schooling because of Pneumonia and Tuberculosis. I was sent to stay with my Aunt Lydia who lived in Kent and will be 100 years old this year. I was sent to Aunt Lydia's to convalesce and was not allowed to attend school. I spent most of the day (for months on end) playing doubler: throwing two (or sometimes three) tennis balls against the wall. This developed my catching skills which proved important in playing netball when I started at JCS.

Elizabeth and Aunt Lydia - 1947

(more photos below)

When I was in First Year at JCS, I met Jean McIntosh from Hebburn New Town School, who became my closest buddy. Almost all of our spare time away from the classroom was spent playing netball or bundlies, a rougher version of rugby. There was one netball and about five or six teams from different classes, all trying to get the ball in any way they could.

School was one big game. Every day we racked our brain as to what we could get up to for laughs. I was often the ring leader, I am ashamed to say. I think of the day when I went to school in a blue and white sun suit which had brief, matching shorts underneath. Aunt Lydia had given it to me. I removed the front buttoned skirt and before I knew it, it was being passed around Mr Bond's Geography class. The lesson was coming to an end and I needed to get my skirt back. I walked out to the front of the classroom and said that someone had my skirt. Cyril Bond said, "All those involved in the lost skirt, come out here." Of course just about the whole class came out and it was bedlam. Mr Younson, who must have heard the din, walked in. I had to stand at the side of the desk so he could not see that I was wearing only shorts. The whole thing eventually resolved itself.
There are dozens of instances like this. We really did not listen and probably learned very little, yet Geography became one of my favourite subjects and I eventually taught it at Ponteland Secondary School, in Northumberland, my first teaching post.

We also played Follow the Leader in Mr Young's Scripture classes. Everyone tried to follow the action such as scratching one's back with a ruler, swinging on two legs of the chair, blowing one's nose and so on. Imagine a whole class in synchrony doing these things!! I must say he was very patient and tended to ignore it.

When my brother Alex was doing his National Service, I sometimes had to go down to the allotment to feed the pigeons.

Pigeon Loft - Dad Jean Audrey and me

(and more photos below)

I was usually given permission to go and Jean came with me. While there we collected a bundle of rhubarb from the forest of the stuff and brought enough back for the class to nibble on during lesson time.

We also had the habit of whitening our sandshoes for the game, putting them on an upstairs window sill to dry and then accidentally knocking them into the street below, thereby having to go down to collect them and missing lesson time. We liked getting out of the classroom.

The netballers idolised Miss Davis who took us all over the place on public transport to play netball against many different schools and to participate in tournaments. She used to allow the older netballers to coach the juniors while she stayed in the staff room and looked out of the window from time to time to make sure everything was OK. Jean and I loved doing this and appreciated the trust she placed in us.

After doing O Level Oxford GCE I decided to go to the Grammar School to do A Levels as I was too young to get in to Teachers' College. Jean could get in a year earlier than I could, her birthday being in September and mine in March. She and I walked over to the Grammar School and were received by the Headmaster, Mr Robinson. We had no appointment, not really knowing the etiquette of such situations. As it happened, we in the Central School had better results that year than the Grammar School students so the Headmaster rang County Hall who immediately gave permission for me to do two years A Levels at the Grammar School.

I wanted to study Biology, in which I had gained one of my highest marks in O Level, but was not permitted as I had to do Arts and ne'er the twain could meet in those days. I studied English, Geography, History and Religious Knowledge. That made seven years of Religious studies in my secondary school career! For most of the two years I scarcely had a Geography teacher or a History teacher. They left and were not replaced. We had to learn the work on our own.

From Grammar School I went to Eastbourne Training College in Sussex. It was like going to Boarding School. We had to be in by 10pm on week days and 11pm on Saturday. The work was so pathetically easy that I tried to transfer to something else (Goldsmith's in London) but was not successful.

My first teaching post was at Coates Endowed Secondary School in Ponteland. I was interviewed for the job by all the Church of England vicars in Northumberland, all men of course, as this was a C of E. School. Thank Gawd I had studied the seven years of Religious knowledge because they gave me, what I thought was, the third degree.

I started teaching in September 1959 as a Geography specialist and remained until May 1963. They were very rewarding years as there were no forms in triplicate to be completed at every turn. I took Geography classes to Ford Castle for a week at a time for field work: we had International camps in Cheshire, I organised trips to Norway on the SS Leda and to Germany by land and sea. I had the freedom to take classes out to map areas around the school, crossing stepping stones on the River Pont and identifying all the landmarks. That same year I crossed a vastly wider stretch of water than the River Pont.

In 1963, I emigrated to Adelaide, South Australia as a ten pound migrant. The Australian Government flew me out in a Vickers Viscount aeroplane which was quite exciting for a lass in her early twenties. I lived in a tin, Nissen hut, the Finsbury Hostel, for seven months. The South Australian Education Department gave me the choice of school and the subjects I wanted to teach. As I fancied teaching Physical Education in the sun and playing sport, I opted for that. PE had been one of my subjects at College so I had the relevant paper work.

I stayed in that position as a Sport and PE teacher, for eight years and travelled around Australia with students. I also travelled with basketball teams as I had joined 'Viscounts', a team I played with for over 12 years. It was now 1971 and I had another career change. I became a Counsellor within a Secondary School. Since arriving in Australia, I had studied one subject a year at Adelaide University in the evening and eventually had Post Graduate qualifications in Psychology. I ended up as Counsellor- Psychologist at Adelaide University itself.

In the meantime, I met my present husband Robert Tindle, at a University of Adelaide soccer match. I had gone out on a Saturday afternoon with Jean McIntosh, my JCS friend, to watch her husband Tom Clubbs (also from Hebburn) and others, play. In due course Bob asked me to go to the Galapagos Islands with him to research Flightless Cormorants, flamingos and sea birds on a (WWF) World Wildlife Fund grant for three years and I took him up on it!

We spent the next three years camping on the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, living in the village of Puerta Ayora , on the island of Santa Cruz, where the Charles Darwin Research Station was situated. I became the Research Station librarian when I was not camping on some distant island.


Camp site	Elizabeth (aged ?)

Balsa wood raft tied together with driftwood	Notice board describing the Charles Darwin research station.

And then there were THREE + picture by Elizabeth	Camp - Backpack

(and more photos below)

We set up a very rough camp on many incredible islands and travelled between islands on rather primitive local fishing boats. On the Island of Isabela which is made up of five volcanoes joined at the base, we studied flamingos. We did not realise that these shy birds had most of their activity in the night or the early hours of the morning and that they nested in the most "clarty" of places. We needed to make a rough raft of balsa wood tied with rope, to get to the breeding colony each night, by the light of the moon. I would sit there for my four hour watch making observations before paddling my way back to camp over the 'spooky' lake. It was called Cemetery Lake because the graves of the convicts (it had been a convict settlement) were at the side of the enormous lake.

We also studied flightless cormorants on the Island of Fernandina, the most distant island. Fernandina is made up of a single volcano which actually erupted while we were in the islands. If anyone saw the movie "Master and Commander" (Russell Crow) you would have seen how these birds have vestigial wings. They are strong swimmers but have lost the ability to fly because they have not had any predators.

In fact, I travelled to Fernandina (a three day journey) when I was seven months pregnant with my son, Paul and I clambered over the sharp volcanic landscape to do my observations, sitting on a rock, every day.

My decision to have a family had been made one day while I was walking up a volcano called Mina de Sal (Salt Mine). I shouted down the path to Bob, that I thought I was ready to have a family. I was 38 at the time. We planned when the most optimum time would be for travelling with a youngster and decided we had to get pregnant in December to make sure he was not too small nor yet running all over the shop on a long flight. Sure enough, it all seemed to go exactly to plan until the actual birth. If you have read my poem "Galapagos Birth" you will have an idea that it almost ended in disaster.


Paul on Tortoise	Elizabeth and Paul born on Galapogas Islands pictures drawn by Elizabeth

We continued our work on distant islands taking our baby with us, until he was almost two years of age, and then we headed back to England to live with my brother Alex, in Harrogate, Yorkshire, where our second child Danielle was born.

From Yorkshire we moved to Glasgow with our two young children. It was in Glasgow that I started the Pre-school Adventure Group at Glasgow University on a beautiful, big estate where the Veterinary School was situated. Parents brought their preschoolers to the purpose-built premises and we introduced many innovative programmes but always incorporated observations of all the young animals being born on the estate. It was a very rich environment for young children.

For a couple of years, I took a full time job in the Alcohol Studies Centre at Paisley University as a researcher, until Bob's grant ended and we moved to Weymouth in Dorset.

Memories - Part Three

Elizabeth Tindle (Baker)

From 1983 until 1985, I worked as a Counselling Psychologist at South Dorset Technical College and lectured in Psychology. My office was situated in the 'Building Department' so some of my closest colleagues were teaching plumbing, plastering, stonemasonry, tiling, brickwork etc. It was at this time that the staff played cricket against the students, the young men training in all aspects of the building industry, and I took my famous hat trick of which I am very proud! (See poetry section). Some of the old pubs had skittle alleys and I enjoyed the games of skittles we had with the building staff, there.

Meanwhile, Bob gained employment in Sussex and we moved to a village near East Grinstead, called Ashurst Wood, in 1985. I lectured in A Level Psychology and Counselling at Crawley College, and started a pilot scheme of group counselling called Newstart, for the Long Term Unemployed. This scheme later went National for many years. For the latter, I was employed by "Manpower Services Commission". In Sussex, we started joining in lots of fun runs and even did a triathlon.

As a hobby and sideline, I had been painting in oils and acrylics in the Galapagos Islands (selling to tourists), Glasgow (doing commissions) and I continued this in a small way in Sussex. I had always enjoyed Art at school with Mr. Johnson who had entered a few of us for an Art Scholarship at Kings College in Newcastle. When we were about 13 or 14, Maureen Seago and I had passed the examination for the Scholarship and we both attended Art classes at the University in Newcastle on Saturday mornings for a couple of years at least. As a result, I still have an interest in painting and I do some from time to time. However, with moving house so much, most of my paintings have been "lost".

In 1987, Bob gained a research position at Princess Alexandria Hospital in Brisbane Australia, so we were off to Antipodes again, this time with two primary school age children. Meanwhile, I looked around for work and ended up doing four jobs! I worked at Griffith University as a researcher part- time, I lectured in Education at Queensland University and I did guest lectures at two colleges. This went on until I obtained a full time position as a Psychologist /Counsellor at QUT (Queensland University of Technology) where I have been for the past 16 plus years.

All the years I have been in Australia, I have played various sports, mainly basketball. One team in Adelaide, Viscounts, I was with for twelve years. A team here in Brisbane (Robertson) I have played with for about 15 years and my current team Mount Crosby (Masochists) I have been with for eleven years. There have also been lots of tournaments. Our teams have participated in World Masters Games, Pan Pacific Games and Australian Masters games. Playing basketball has been so important in my life. I even played on the National Park team in the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, being the tallest player and the only female in the team. This love of racing around, throwing a ball, started at JCS and has continued throughout my life. Later this month (July 2005,) I will be joining a group of Over 60s American women at the World Masters Games in Edmonton, Canada.

Other sports I have played in and have enjoyed are cricket (in UK and Australia), weight lifting, fun runs, volleyball and swimming. I only do long distance swimming now so that I don't have to sprint, as I have a pacemaker.

I have found a great deal of satisfaction out of reflecting on JCS and the importance of it in my life. I do not think that a restrictive, rule bound school with strict discipline would have suited my personality. JCS gave me so much personal freedom and enabled me to live without a care in the world. Life then was so much fun, and laughter has remained an important component of my life.

Summing up I would say that attending JCS initiated some passions that have lasted a lifetime such as playing sport (Miss Davis- netball), painting (Mr. Johnson-Art) and an interest in knowing about and exploring the world (Mr. Bond –Geography). JCS and the teachers who taught me ( Mr. Young: Mrs.Youngs) also planted the seeds of the skills I have had in language which have served me well in the 46 years of my career. JCS provided a safe, happy environment giving that sense of belonging which nurtures strength of character in young people. It contributed to making me a team person who enjoys working and playing with others and I continue to do this to this day.