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Welcome to the Guestbook
Feel free to add messages relating to the site and the school. The only rules are: real names only, no personal attacks and no unrelated messages (inappropriate messages may be edited/withdrawn without warning).

It would be appreciated if you gave an email address, where you now live and said when you were at the school, but you don't have to.

Plase note that if you click on an email address below you will need to replace ~DOT~ with . and ~AT~ with @ in your email program. The Guestbook presents these this way to avoid email address harvesters collecting your email addresses from the page. I know it's a pain, but it's very much better than the alternative.

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There are 500 messages in the guestbook
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Viewing messages 41 to 50

Bruce Graham | bsgraham~AT~btinternet~DOT~com

Nice one Alex!

Curiously, thinking back I don't recall any of the Teaching staff in our era having a particularly strong sense of humour.

However when it came to corporal punishment there were several very active individuals.

These days they would all be up incourt!!

Tue 5-Aug-2025 19:31 - ruskington lincolnshie

Alex Patterson, VUA 1946 - 1951 | ad1935ap~AT~gmail~DOT~com

Oooooops, I should have said, "Are you for Harton?"

Mon 4-Aug-2025 01:40 - North York, Ontario, Canada

Alex Patterson, VUA 1946 - 1951 | ad1935ap~AT~gmail~DOT~com

Eric that reminds me of the old dad-joke; Lady to driver of horse drawn carriage, "Excuse me, but is this carriage "for Harton?
"No Ma'am, it must be the horse!"
Sorry,
Alex

Sun 3-Aug-2025 20:57 - North York, Ontario, Canada

Eric Moyse 1946 to 1952 (Boys) | eric~DOT~moyse35~AT~yahoo~DOT~com

Ah, yes. Cleading and Harting.

Sun 3-Aug-2025 07:33 - Reading, Berkshire

Bruce Graham | bsgraham~AT~btinternet~DOT~com

Accents.

It's interesting that our colleagues from the Dominions should have retained a recognisable accent from all those years ago.

My brother, Douglas, school 1945-50, always known as "CD" in an A form with three Grahams, lived most of his working life after qualifying in industrial chemistry as an expatriate. First in Mexico, where he became fluent in Spanish, working for an American company where he acquired a pronounced Yankee twang. Then in Spain, Cincinatti, and Belgium so he had a real mixture of influences. Curiously in his latter days, by then retired to the south of France, there were signs of his origins emerging in his speech.

For myself, having completed an apprenticeship in the Royal Air Force where I was surrounded by young people from all over the UK and gradually changed the way I spoke I entered an era where pronounced regional accents were not seen as positive attributes in ambitions to progress. Thank goodness those attitudes have now changed (I think).

So Pam Hedley would now be proud of me having tried all those years ago to instil "proper pronunciation" with little effect. My father equally as he always insisted that words ending in "ing" should be enunciated properly.

Fri 1-Aug-2025 19:32 - ruskington lincolnshie

Alex Patterson, VUA 1946 - 1951 | ad1935ap~AT~gmail~DOT~com

Hi Neale et al,
It's good to see a little more life in the GB. With reference to our immutable Geordie accents, I must relate a story going back a few years when my girls were in their early teens, 40 plus years ago, they brought one of their friends home after school. I found out later that she thought my accent was "so hot", that she thought I should follow the lead of other parents in the school, and address the class about my schooldays. Which I did, and I must say my talk was well received, particularly my party piece, Sonnet 29, which I will recite at the drop of a hat. Apparently my Geordie accent intrigued some of them enough to come up to me afterwards and asked me to pronounce different words or their names. I also remember talking about Pan Hedley.
Your letter, Neale, prompted me enough to dig out my copy of "Hills of Holborn" again to analyze my accent...it's still there but not as grating as it was before I went to SSGTSFB. Something else to be thankful for. I'm off to Cottage Country for the next few weeks, family reunion time.
As Tommy Handley would say, "TTFN",
Alex, from a stot and hicky North York

Sun 27-Jul-2025 16:15 - North York, Ontario, Canada

Neale Backhouse | neale1447~AT~gmail~DOT~com

Come come you two, wallowing in that grizzly Geordie accent. Pan Hedley will be turning in his grave when he recalls his efforts to have us pronounce our long vowel sounds. It must please you Alex to hear your daughters speak in their accentless (well almost) Canadian voices. I certainly do with my lot. Not that it applies to me, although I try hard enough. After sixty two years in this erstwhile Colony I was in a walk-in clinic for minor repairs recently, when the doctor said to me, "You must be from the North of England." Nuff said.
Cheers,Neale.

Sun 27-Jul-2025 04:33 - Victoria BC

Alex Patterson, VUA 1946 - 1951 | ad1935ap~AT~gmail~DOT~com

Hello Eric,
ChatGBT is an AI site too...their comments are similar, bit this is why we have to be careful and not to accept their responses as gospel. I use ChatGBT frequently but never for anything personal or important and never even enter my name. There are enough cautionary tales about the internet, let alone AI, to make us ultra careful about what we add.
Good to see you and the others back on line. It's 4:55 PM and 31C in beautiful North York. Off for my evening sit out before supper is served. I'm doing my third round reading of Ian Rankin's 26 'Rebus' books and enjoy them more at each reading. One of my daughters gave me a copy of his very first published work, "The Flood" not a Rebus book. So that's something else to which I can look forward to reading.
Regards to all,
Alex

Fri 25-Jul-2025 22:03 - North York, Ontario, Canada

Eric Moyse 1946 to 1952 (Boys) | eric~DOT~moyse35~AT~yahoo~DOT~com

Sorry, Alex but this is Artificial Intelligence so it must be right:

AI Overview
"Ha'way" is a Geordie (Newcastle/North East England) term that generally means "come on" or "hurry up". It can also be used as an expression of encouragement, particularly in the phrase "Ha'way the lads", often heard at football matches. The term is thought to have originated from "have way" or "hold away".

Fri 25-Jul-2025 10:40 - Reading, Berkshire

Alex Patterson, VUA 1946 - 1951 | ad1935ap~AT~gmail~DOT~com

In keeping with my New Year’s resolution to contribute at least one entry a month to the Guestbook…here comes July’s entry. It was prompted by Eric’s latest welcome plethora of messages and subsequent replies. When I read Eric’s observations on “Howay the Lads”, I immediately went to my latest best pal, ChatGBT, and asked the question. This is what came back.
———————————————————————————————————————
“The
Geordie expression "Howay the Lads" is a rallying cry or cheer originating from the Tyneside area in North East England, especially associated with Newcastle upon Tyne and Sunderland. It roughly translates to "Come on, the lads!" and is most commonly heard at football matches and other spirited gatherings.
Derivation of "Howay"
The word "Howay" is believed to have developed from a contraction and regional pronunciation of "away" or "come away", influenced by the Northumbrian dialect. Linguists often link it to older or variant forms of English spoken in the North East, where vowel shifts and dropped consonants are common.
Possible roots:
"Come away" → pronounced as something like "c'm'way" → phonetically altered over time to "Howay" in the local dialect.
It may also have been influenced by Middle English or Scots forms. For example, in Scots dialect, “awa’” means “away.”
So in Geordie:
"Howay" = Come on / Hurry up / Let’s go
"The lads" = The team / the boys / our group
Usage:
"Howay, man!" = Come on, man!
"Howay the Lads!" = Come on, the boys! (usually supportive and enthusiastic)
This expression is now deeply embedded in local identity, especially in Newcastle United football culture and other areas of North East England.
———————————————————————————————————————

Neale mentioned that he had seen me on TV, and I couldn’t for the life of me remember what or when it could have been.
When I talked to one of my granddaughters about the mystery, she said, “You did that interview about your street in South Shields a few years ago.” Then of course it all came back to me.
I could pinpoint exactly when it took place, because it was the week after the Icelandic volcanic explosion that paralyzed air travel in Europe in April 2010. We were stranded in Paris Orly without any means of getting to Newcastle. Unfortunately for me, I suffered one of my rare (and most recent) labrynthitis attacks just after we landed. Marjorie managed, with the help of a waiter from an airport bistro, to get me onto the bus for the Air France local Hotel. Then our niece drove all the way from Newcastle to the Paris airport hotel and drove us back through the Chunnel all the way back to Newcastle, where I was bedridden for the next week. Prior to all this, I had been in touch with Janis Blower of the Shields Gazette who had a series called “Tyne Travellers” in which she asked people to write about their lives after leaving South Shields. So I wrote the story of our travels, about 5,000 words, that she cut down to perhaps 1500 words. On March 12, 2004, she turned it into a beautiful article, the two centre pages of the Gazette with four colour photos that I had provided with the text, and I have a laminated copy of it right in front of me in my office as I write.
When I recovered from my labrynthitis, I dropped in to the Gazette office on spec to see Janis again to thank her again for the article and she remembered us and commented on a man called Gary Wilkinson who was filming documentaries about Tyneside. She gave me his number and I called him right away. I explained who I was, where I had lived and he said, “I’ve just finished the Holborn movie, but if you can come up right now I can interview you and cut you in. Which is what I did…and the rest is history. The DVD with me in is called ‘The Hills of Holborn’ and he sent me a subsequent video called, ‘Skuetenders’ , about the Lawe Top, where we lived in our early married years. They might be on YouTube.
I’ve just finished my painting of a coffee shop we used to go to in New York City, called Serendipity…I love the word. Anyhow we saw the movie named after the shop and decided we would go visit. It was fantastic, all of the waiters (sorry waitstaff) were actors looking for parts, one had actually been an extra in the movie and we sat at the table where the two principals in the movie had dated. So we ordered what they had… “Frozen Hot Chocolate”… it was huge and memorable. I took a photo of the place when we left and have copied that with a few mods but I’m very happy with the end result.
That’s enough for now…I’m off to supper, we’ve got a great chef!! Bye from a 28 C North York
Alex

Wed 23-Jul-2025 22:49 - North York, Ontario, Canada

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