Photo by Bal Singh "our trip to play football in Holland it was great trip. Met some wonderful people and had some great games. We were in 4th year then 14 or 15 years old before final year 1977 / 78.
Photo from Sat Banwait. Sat says "School Cross country team mid 1970’s, I was the team Captain. In the photo Aidan Campbell, Richard Bruce, Paul Bretts on the right, Carl Dunneen?
Former pupil Mark Jeffries in Carry On Mother Goose at Drapers hall Coventry 2023.
Back to the 60's - Two photos from John Tearse.
Photo from Paul Blundell "Abandoned Highley (or Arley) railway station 1968. We walked along the tracks from the school one Saturday and found an old pump truck which we rode on for a couple of miles."
From Ged Ostick "Cricket Squad 1974
Back Row Vickers Castle Freeman Edwards Gervenus Durack Ostick
Front Row Karamat Lis Weir Marson Milne Peatfield Ostick"
Ford Capri says "How many of us can remember making a wooden fish under the direction of Mr. Plaice? I still have the one I made back in 1977. I also made an oak fruit bowl, on the wood lathe, which got lost during a house move, but I still have the glass topped chess table I made in 1980. " Warren Shepherd says "In the mid fifties we made a ship. 12 inch long pointed at one end, half cut at the other end and a half inch groove near the front. A square block with a dowel for the funnel glued on."
Dave McGarry - now known as Texas Dave McGarry ( an on honorary name from the state of Texas) was at the school in the early 60's. In the early 70's he left Coventry - hitch hiked his way across dangerous terrain, deserts all the way to Australia where he settled and his love of Texas country music led him to bring well known Texas artists to Australia for gigs - hence his honorary title. For a while he worked at Virgin records in Coventry where he discovered Texas music.
Dave wrote - "I JUST LEFT MYSELF.
52 YEARS AGO TODAY.. 16th August, 1971.
I walked away from me, walked away from my old life as a baker in Coventry, England. I'd dreamed about walking away for years, and on that Monday morning fifty two years ago I didn't go to work that day. I walked up the street from my house, took a left turn, and was standing on the Kenpas Highway half an hour later with my thumb in the air. Within minutes a truck pulled up and I was gone.
That night I was on a boat to France, and the following morning my long hitch-hike to Australia began. It didn't start well, I had bought a new pair of TUF boots before I left, the bright yellow ones that the labourers wore on building sites and digging ditches. The boots the Irish navvies wore building England again (navvy, a disparaging term used for labourers, usually against the Irish, in England)
The boots were made for work, not walking across continents. That night I slept on a French bench in the rain, with blisters on my feet. Ouch.
The other thing I bought before I left was a cheap compass. It had four letters on it. N. S. W. and E. The following morning I followed the N and after a few lifts I was in Belgium.
Europe was a blur. Autobhans, Autostradas, Highways without names, they all whisked me away to places that I'd never heard of.
Italy was tough. They didn't like the English. In fact not many places in Europe liked the English. I remember trying to sleep in the railway station in Rome and the cops coming in with a water cannon and blasting me out. At least I got to see the Colosseum and the Trevi Fountain before being chased out of Rome (I didn't realise it was a famous Fountain. I thought it was just full of cracked statues and water that was used for the water cannon)..
Talk about ignorance. I'd just walked away from the Swinging Sixties. I didn't know anything about Culture.
I just followed the E on the compass and kept going. And going. Jumping in and out of cars, trucks, anything that would stop for me.
Europe was in the rear view mirror, and the lands of Islam were facing me. Jesus was gone. Muhammad was up ahead.
I hitch-hiked all the way to Tabriz in Iran, before realising that the folly of standing in the middle of the desert all day waiting for the next ride with murderers and thieves (and at least one camel train) just wasn't worth it any more. I got sick in Tabriz and lay semi conscious in a cheap room until someone found me a few days later. A voice inside me said "Don't die here".. Or maybe that's what the person who found me said?
I had almost lost my life on a daily basis in Turkey, and I was battle scarred from running for my life every day..
So I finally caught a bus in Tabriz, then another, then another.. On and on across the lands of the mullahs and warlords of ancient Islam. Every day was high drama for this naive infidel from another world.
Anyway, it's a long story, worthy of a book. But I made it all the way to Australia, 10,000 miles, arriving just before Christmas of that same year, 1971.
It wasn't a spiritual journey, I wasn't looking for enlightenment. I was just gone.
Kerouac wrote that great book "On The Road", but I don't think young Jack himself would have seen some of the horrors that came my way on the long road through Asia Minor (thanks Butch Hancock for that one)..
There's no way you could do that journey again. Earthquakes took some of the towns off the map in Turkey. And the Taliban, the Mujahideen, and Islamic fundamentalists would take your life off the map without thinking twice.
Picture..
52 years ago. I didn't go to work that day.
John Comasky loaded his school report from the Wyre Farm Camp School Days 1950. The report books changed in 1957 when the school became the City of Coventry Boarding School.
Phil Hawkes forgot to take his library book back 47 years ago - Oh dear what will the fine be!! Inside the book is the City of Coventry Secondary boarding school stamp. The original name of the school after the Wyre farm Camp School title.
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