The 1962 School Magazine
In
the Centenary Magazine of June 1962 John Dallas wrote an interesting
introduction. Here I reproduce that
introduction, a few items written by pupils, the Centenary Prize List and a
selection of centenary photographs.
‘Miller
Academy
When
the Miller Institution opened its doors 100 years ago education was not free
although public spirited people in this town came as near as possible to
providing it and although the modern philosophy about the importance of Age,
Aptitude and Ability had not then been suggested we read in even the earliest
Inspectors’ Reports favourable comment on the provision of cultural subjects
such as music and art. We even find
a Rector granting half holidays for skating but when we read some of the other
entries we suspect his motives and assume he must have liked it himself.
Examination
results always merited favourable comment, often the highest commendation, and
numerous former pupils reached the top of the profession of their choice, some
achieving national recognition. Originally,
and for many years apart from one or two, members of staff, whose qualifications
were of paramount importance, were drawn from outside the county and it is
interesting to note that some left here for posts in England.
In recent years the compliment has been returned for some of our staff
are of English origin.
Methods
and conditions have changed considerably in the century and all for the better.
Truancy is no longer a feature of school life, indeed it is not unusual
now for children to show reluctance to leave the classroom.
Brighter textbooks and equipment make the assimilation of learning more
easy and it is our duty to keep in step with the times so that our pupils will
never feel in adult life that they missed anything in their childhood that could
have enriched it in any way; they
should feel they had had every opportunity to develop their own personalities
and skills.
We
enter the second century of our history with every confidence.
June,
1962.’
The
Adventures of a Tramp
by Judith
A Newman, P7 (Dux of the School)
I
will introduce myself. I am
Ebenezer Barrows, known commonly as ‘Easy’, because that is how I take life.
many poets have described me as a ‘carefree wanderer’ or a ‘rover
bold’ but I am usually called a ‘tramp’.
I stand five-foot eleven in boots – that is when I have any.
I am rather plump, with ragged clothes, a white moustache and beard –
for I cannot afford razor blades – a pipe, and a brown, and I think, rather
good-looking face. Of my adventures there is one which is quite common, being
arrested for vagrancy. However this
is not very disconcerting because a warm cell, with ample food and a good bed
can be extremely comfortable. Another
common adventure is losing the seat of my trousers!
It is surprising the number of people who keep bulldogs.
Last
year I had an amusing adventure. I
had settled down on top of a haystack and was about to fall asleep when I heard
shouts coming from the road. A
well-dressed man was chasing after another man with a sack over his shoulder.
The latter was evidently a thief. Unfortunately
the well-dressed man stumbled and hit his head on a stone.
When
I was on holiday in Wiltshire some time ago I visited a beautiful little village
called Boutron–on-the Water. In
this village a retired policeman built a model village in his garden exactly
like the village itself. The
buildings were about my height and a little stream flowed through the village.
People could walk along the little streets and see all the different
shops and houses with their tiny gardens of flowers just as they had seen them
in the village. The model church
had stained glass windows and the organ music could be heard coming from the
church. Lots of people from all
over the world come to see it.
Early
one morning at Biggin hill airfield the alarm bell echoed shrilly through the
eerie stillness. The Battle of
Britain had begun some weeks before and it was usual to see
a dark grey cloud of German bombers in the heavens.
A
shout from the control tower warned that a squadron of German bombers had been
located and were heading for the air-field.
A swarm of pilots ran across the grey tarmac and leapt into their
Spitfires. The whole squadron soon
took to the air and, in battle formation, made ready to attack the enemy.
The thundering sound of the big guns not far away told that their foe was
easily within range. They climbed
steeply until they reached an altitude of nine thousand feet and then levelled
off ready to dive their Spitfires into the thick of the fray.
These pilots were outnumbered two to one but nevertheless they were ready
and eager to give combat to the invader. One
of the pilots spotted what looked like a great bird partly camouflaged by the
dingy mist that prevailed. Suddenly
out of the mist the British Squadron fell upon the enemy and many German
aircraft caught in the fire of an attacker would go tumbling from the air to
destruction. The British did not
‘get off’ scot-free although their losses were considerably less than the
Germans’. The broken German
squadron fled in a series of twos and threes.
The victors also returned but in a more dignified manner.
Fights
like these are memorable because they show the courage and determination with
which the British beat back the invader.
One
bright summer’s day in 1980 a man walking through Piccadilly Circus happened
to look up towards the sky. Coming
down out of the blue was a flying saucer. His
gasp of surprise attracted the looks of other people.
Then they saw him gazing into the sky.
Slowly the saucer drifted downwards.
A
door opened in the side and something not belonging to this world stepped out.
The silence was intense. A
child screamed. The creature had
huge bulging eyes, and wings the size of a grown man.
Its colour was a dark green with orange blotches.
Then
followed something of a nightmare for the people of England.
Every day more of these monsters came and soon there were over one
hundred. Their plan was to
overpower gradually the world. But
they forgot one thing. To live
these monsters needed a special kind of weed.
This would grow only on Mars where they came from.
So they had to build special green-houses to store the food brought over
from Mars. One man had access to it
and decided to leave open the doors so that the weed would not grow properly.
One
night he left the green-house door open. The
next day no more Martians were left for they had all died from lack of their
life-giving food. England was free.
My
Neighbour’s Dog by
Irene Munro P6
My
neighbour’s dog is s poodle whose name is Judy.
She is a fast runner. She
plays with bones and she and I often play chases.
She is only four months old this week.
She will run after a ball now. She
will play with slippers. When I
come home at dinnertime and shout her name she will run to meet me and wag her
tail. Yesterday she ran in the park
with the cows.
One
Sunday when I cam home from Sunday school my mother asked me if I wanted to go
for a picnic. I thought it would be
quite a nice idea. A man had told
my father a new way to go to Latheronwheel, and we found it a more interesting
route. Instead of the wild moors of
the Causewaymire we found a lot of small crops and trees scattered in a nice
valley. At the dell at
Latheronwheel we had a nice picnic. The
sun was warm and the birds were singing. After
our tea we played hid-and-seek among the trees and just before we left for home
we picked a lovely bunch of primroses. When
we reached home, sad to say, the sun had gone and fog covered the whole town.
I
first discovered the magic powder while I was passing the statue of a famous
poet. I saw it standing at the foot
of the plinth. It was in a bottle
and as I am very curious I took it into a corner of a building to study it
closely. I pulled out the
cork and took a sniff. Suddenly I
no longer saw my hand. I took quite
a few minutes to recover from the shock. After
that I decided to enjoy being invisible. I
walked over, climbed up and sat on the head of the statue.
A few minutes later a party of tourists came to look at the statue.
Suddenly they jumped back in horror; they thought that the statue had
sneezed. I sneezed again and after
that they took off down the road as fast as they could possibly go.
It was just then that I saw two of the people I hated most.
I thought I could have a bit of fun with them.
I followed them down the road until we came in sight of an ancient house
which is supposed to be haunted. At
that precise moment I had an ideal plan. I
sprinted down the road and stopped at the garden gate of the house.
Just then I had another idea. As
my enemies were coming near I jumped over the gate and stood on a sundial.
As they passed I touched them with a stick and said in a hollow voice,
‘Come hither, my dear friends. My
master wishes to speak to you.’ As
my enemies were very adventurous they consented.
Opening the gate, they walked up to the place from where my voice seemed
to some. In a rather shaky voice
they said, T-take us to y-your master.’ I
explained to them that they had to walk up the path and wait at the door of the
house.
I
walked inside the house and as I walked over to a long chest, took out a suit of
armour, put it on and rather shakily walked over to a great chair in the hall.
Sitting down I shouted at my enemies, ‘The master is ready to speak to
you.’ They walked into the room.
I stood up and said, ‘Bow before the master.’ As
they bowed to me I took a pike which was lying beside me and threw it at the
door to shut it. Immediately the
room went as dark as pitch. I stood
up, took off the armour, laid it down, tip-toed over to the stairs and ran up,
into a bedroom where I took a candle which I lit and fixed in a stand.
This I put on a chair. Hastily
pulling a sheet from the bed, I used my penknife to cut slits for eyes, fetched
a pillow from the bed and a brush from a cupboard and made a kind of ghost.
In
the meantime I could hear my enemies discussing the fact that when the door had
shut it had locked itself and battering on it with the pike.
After listening to this I took the candle in one hand and the ‘ghost’
in the other. As I walked out of
the room I tied the ‘ghost’ to the end of a rope and swung it over the heads
of my prisoners. In the dark the
‘ghost’, lit up by the candle, looked quite frightening.
After this the terrified pair, having succeeded in breaking the lock off
the door turned on their heels and ran out of the opened door into the street.
I
began to tire of frightening people and so I walked out of the house and caught
a bus to the theatre where there was one of Shakespeare’s plays being
performed. As my father was owner
of the theatre I was going to ask him if I could play the invisible king.
Luckily the powder wore away when I stepped off the bus.
I said ‘luckily’ because my father was in a very bad mood.
Fortunately, however, I have still the bottle to keep as a souvenir.
Once
upon a time there was a family of wooden dolls.
The father was called Mr Wooden Doll, the mother was called Mrs wooden
Doll and the twins were called Pip and Pop.
One day pip and Pop decided to run away to the big city.
In the night they only pretended to go to sleep.
When Mrs wooden Doll came in she thought that they were fast asleep and
she went to her own bedroom to go to bed. Now
Pip and Pop were quite sure that their mother and father were asleep.
At the next moment they were out of the window and into the woods.
They ran and they ran until they were in the big city.
The big city was called London. To
the twins London was an amazing city. Everything
was far bigger than in the woods. There
were lots of towers and huge buildings. While
they were concentrating on the buildings Mrs Wooden Doll came to the city and
took her two naughty children home.
Once
upon a time there was a lamb who ran away from his mother wanting to have some
adventures. He was called Skippy
because he skipped about. Now this
month was May when the flowers were out and the birds were flying about.
Skippy skipped to the other side of the field to the big gate which was
shut and locked but there was a wee hole just big enough for a wee lamb to
squeeze through. Out into the wood
went Skippy and into the middle of the wood where Ferdy the Fox lived.
But the fox was out hunting so it was all right.
Soon Skippy came to the end of the wood where an eagle picked up poor
Skippy. The eagle took Skippy up
into the sky and put him on a strange island.
Poor Skippy wondered how he was going to get off the island.
But soon the farmer came in yacht and rescued Skippy from the strange
island.
I
love to play at playtime. School is
a lovely place.
Donald
Farquhar
When
I grow up I want to marry a nice man. I
want to have three children, all girls. We
will bake caks and I will let them like the bowl.
Jennifer
Batty
Uncl
alin gose to the tratr and gose to het food for the koos.
Granda goes with the koos to the woods.
Kenneth
Calder
I
went to Bumingham on Saturday. I
played with Neil. We played
cow-boys and Indieans. I went to
the shops with my Mummy. I am
saveing my money bcose I am going to buy a rooesrois when I grow up.
Jeremy
Cottrell
I am going to be a filmstar, becase
you get killed in the film with tomato druse.
Christopher
O’Neil
Whe I was if mi holidays mi Daddy had a crash but it was not so bad. He onle had his hed lits smasht.
David
Lyall
I am going to be a teacher and a jockey when I grow up. I am going to teach the children first, and then when I come home I will ride my horse. Jane Pickthall
Dux
of the School:
Judith A. Newman
Primary
7/1
Primary 7/2
1.
Judith A. Newman
1.
Harry J. C Paterson
2.
Margaret A. Burgess
2.
Victor M. Young
3.
Anne E. Macpherson
3.
Elizabeth C. Calder
For
Attainment:-
For Attainment:-
Morag Gray
Richard A. Levens
Martin Cope
Peter N. Holiday
Alistair F Mackenzie
Maurice G. Dodd
George Ross
John Topping
Keith Morgan
James T. Douglas
Clifford Shaw
Burns
Federation Certificates
Norman Arrowsmith
(P7/2)
Anne E. Macpherson
(P7/1)
Special
Prize
Monica Rodger
(P7/1)
SSPCA
Essay Prize
Margaret A. Burgess
(P7/1)
Special
Prize for Bible
Judith A. Newman
(P7/1)
Primary
7/3
Primary 7/4
1. Mary E. Drever 1. Eileen J. Cowie