Pool Meadow - Back to school!

Dean Revell

We use to meet up at the Coventry center bus depot (Pool Meadow), get into separate coaches, depending on house (Blount, Dudley or Mortimer). Our suitcases  ( and bikes) thrown on to a lorry (nearly said truck) and off we would go. I remember the drive to school took all of 1/2 hour, but the drive from school to Cov. would take at least a day!


John Burke (From Topix)
I remember the coach trips from Pool Meadow and the open truck that took all the luggage and bicycles to Cleobury.


Paul Rees  "One more day to go, one more day of sorrow, one more day of this old dump and we'll be home tomorrow!" Sang on the bus going back to Pool meadow at end of term.



While on this topic - I began dabbling in writing song lyrics at Cleobury c 1966. I found a couple of lyrics called Boarding School Blues Pt 1 and 2  written while at school and which focused on leaving Pool Meadow for the school at 12 years old and returning home.


Boarding School Blues - Part 1
by Trev Teasdel

A case goes in the back
A bag goes in the rack
We go in the coach and down the wayward track.
We are 12, never left home, off to make it on our own.
The coach draws off, along the drive
Our parents weep n wave and strive to see their darlings off.

Chorus
Leaving home for the first time
To get those boarding school blues
Leaving home in term time
To break the old school rules!

Fun n games n chat, handkerchiefs and looking back
Finger spotting, whistling at the girls as the journey's scenery unfurls.
And suddenly it's endless fields and looking back..
Regretting this, regretting that, wishing your were on the homeward track
The homesick blues, you're feeling bad. Could have been kinder to mum and dad!


Chorus
Leaving home for the first time
To get those boarding school blues
Leaving home in term time
To break the old school rules!


Conversation runs rings around your head,
You're feeling down, wish your were dead
as you gaze upon an endless void ahead
Life's a mysterious tutor that leads you on towards your future.
You catch a joke, maybe you snigger but the hurt inside just gets bigger.


Chorus
Leaving home for the first time
To get those boarding school blues
Leaving home in term time
To break the old school rules!



Boarding School Blues (Part 2)

Chorus

One more day in this old place

There's one more day and we're going home.

Going home after far too long

We're going home.

In the prep room there is chaos,
Even the Masters celebrate
Fun fights in dormitories,
Nobody can wait.
It's all midnight packing and bed-ransacking
Pillow fights and bright torch-light
Everybody's getting ready
Everybody knows
We're going home.

At last the time has come,
No one will sleep tonight
Lights out - half past ten
No one gives a damn
Midnight raids on the staff room,
Biscuits topped with jam.
It's all been meals and lessons, slippers, canes, assembly
But tomorrow - we're going home,

Tossing caps in the Severn as the coach rolls over the bridge
Gulls come to greet them and fly off over the ridge
It's all 'when I get home..I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that'
Nothing seems to matter when you're on the homeward track.

Look out Coventry city - the boys are back in town
The girls are looking pretty, we'll soon be hanging round.
It's been facts n figures and classroom triggers
but now we're coming home.

......

On Visiting Day


Michael Billings

Thinking back to the Sundays once a month when our Parents visited the school. The coaches from Coventry were Bunty or Red House Motor Services from Spon End, Coventry. Their garage was just before the Railways Arches. Wow i had forgotten about that until today.

Visiting day - parents would arrive in cars or on the coach. You'd maybe book lunch at a hotel in Cleobury or maybe Ludlow or maybe the family would picnic in Wyre forest. You'd get the whole until about 6pm with your parents, to go out of school. You felt sorry for the lads whose parents were in the forces or from homes whose parents couldn't visit. Sometimes, if they were friends they might come with you. After all the excitement the evening would be a total come down. The only saving grace was the tuck parcel that could be unraveled afterwards.

Another lyric I wrote at the time - on the playground in 1966, waiting for supper after visiting day was this. I used the emotion you felt after the parents had gone home to write a lyric but turned it into something more universal. I had the single As Tears go By - Marianne Faithful and Dylan, Donovan, Paul Simon were all newly out so the musical influence would from the work of those artists.


OH WHY DID YA LEAVE
by Trev Teasdel

The stars shine bright above
People below talk about love
But me I'm sittin' here,
every now and then a tear.

Chorus
Oh why did ya leave?
You were mine I do believe
Oh why did ya leave?
You were mine I do believe

No one can tell the way I fell for your arms
There was no way to repel your charms
You came to me when I needed a lift
Now you have flown with the winds so swift.

The night's so dark, it hides the mark you made.
You shone so bright in the night then began to fade
The room's so bare, there's no one there, I cry out all in vain.
The floor it creaks, my mind it seeks, a rest from all this pain.

1966 Cleobury Mortimer

The next lyric with any relevance to the school was written on leaving the school in my final year - summer 1967. The idea for the lyric (which had a Paul Simon influence) came as the coach lined up outside the Bursar's office, waiting to leave. The Bursar's window sill gets a name check!

In the chorus I took poetic licence and said we 'hitch hiked home' but obviously we went by coach. The Glen and the slippy embankment also gets a plug metaphorically in the song!


IT’S A LONG HITCH HIKE HOME
by Trev Teasdel,

Well now, at last, the term has ended
And we’re ready to return.
I say goodbye to all my friends
For I have many things to learn,
And ambitions to fulfil
And I whisper to my friend
Whose mind is still on the window sill.

Chorus -
It’s long hitch hike home
So I give my hair a comb
Put my rucksack on my back
And proceed down the track.

I’m off to seek my fortune
But not in pence and pounds
I’m off to seek my fortune
But not in jewels and crowns
I’m off to seek the truth
I’ve been looking for, for years
I’m off to seek a sun,
In a crowded mass of tears.

I’ve travelled through the glens
And made many friends
But as I try to wend my way
Up the embankment slimy clay
I sometimes slip and fall
Like a silver waterfall
But eventually I’ll climb
And overcome the slime.

I’ve travelled many miles
Through many empty valleys
And I’ve had my fair share
Of the darkness of the alleys
I’ve come across folk
Searching for their yoke
They sound their motto wide
“Seek and thou shalt find”

Everybody’s searching
For what? – They do not know
Gazing from their windows
They bow their heads low.
People trying to reach
With hands that can not feel
People trying to speak
To images unreal….

....................................

Strange but in 2021 the new Pool Meadow building, where the school coach used to leave from, now has the Ska'd for Life 2 Tone Mosaic on by artist Carrie Reichart as part of the City of Culture status and Trev Teasdel is featured on it with his 1974 Coventry music magazine Hobo as seen below.