Arthur Probert, M.P.

1921 - 1927

Underneath the House of Commons Chamber - deep down - there are a number of very small rooms called interview rooms. Here, a Member of Parliament can dictate to his secretary or, indeed, interview a constituent.

Sometimes, when I take the lift down there, early in the morning, I smell a certain musty odour. As so often happens to us all, certain smells send the memory fleeting back to particular places, or to particular moments of time. In this place, at a particular time in the morning, I can smell the old Chem Lab of my own County School some thirty odd years ago!

I see once again the musty, even dirty, lab with Daddy Elliott peering quizzically at what, I am certain, seemed to him a natural phenomenon - the British Schoolboy! In his mouth, Daddy Elliot would be constantly chewing a cheap, wooden penholder which he occasionally dipped into some peculiar concoction - made by himself - and which he called ink!

He was certainly my favourite character - really Dickensian, a lovable, excentric man, and the schoolboy's equivalent of the absent-minded professor.

His experiments were always unpredictable and exciting. He thoroughly enjoyed them! We all co-operated, and great was Daddy's delight when, following a loud explosion, we all simulated great surprise, some of us falling down in pretended shock.

I am afraid there was no pretence of hygiene in that lab, and I can still see the lovable old chap tottering around test tubes and bunsen burners, dipping his pen into various smelly fluids and then masticating that same pen with absent-minded, but evident enjoyment!

In a different vein, who can forget "Oggy" - Mr Ogwen Williams - Geography and Music. What an incongruous combination! Oggy was the barometer of his classroom. He responded to its moods, sometimes elation, sometimes depression, but never really dull.

He was thrilled one day when one not so innocent youngster asked him if Lake Ogwen had been named after him. I cannot recall what Oggy replied but he radiated his delight that he should have been so honoured. Indeed, there was an attractive naivety about him. For example, he thought he was a good detective, and would pretend to leave the room for some distant place, whereupon he wound jump back into the classroom in order to catch some misguided boy doing something he should not be doing. If Oggy was succesful, his face glowed with satisfaction. Yet he was never malicious.

As so often happens, we had an outbreak of broken window panes. Oggy was determined to catch the miscreants to fulfil his part as school detective. He would dart hither and thither into unexpected places and at unexpected times. One of the boys was fed up with this and was determined to get his own back. He rigged up a contraption, whereby, by pulling a piece of concealed string he could let down a window flap, suddenly. On the flap he had already placed pieces of broken glass. A sudden tug of the cord from inside the class and there would occur a resounding crash of broken glass. Oggy would run out into the yard to "arrest" the offender. He never found him and, to my knowledge, never discovered the trick played upon him!

At one time he had visions of becoming the local weather expert. He began to keep a rain gauge. Much to his astonishment, the gauge kept registering appreciable rainfall, when the night and day had been dry and fine. I am sure it took Oggy sometime to realise that the rain was not rain but the result of a most natural action of a human body. That human body belonged to a boy I knew. I hasten to add that it was not I.

At one time, too, he had ideas of election to the local Council, if my memory is correct. What I do remember in a morning when he came to the classroom to find hundreds of tram tickets lining the walls, all the tickets portraying the simple advertisement of a well known beer called "Brains". The advert read, 'Its BRAINS you want'. One could take that message in one of two ways, Oggy took it the only way he could, as a compliment to him. I know we had a very pleasant lesson with no homework!

Who can forget "Bobs" - Mr. Aubrey Roberts - the history master. His love of history was equalled only by his love of rugby. It is fitting to record that the Welsh Secondary Schools Rugby Union owes a great debt to him for his tireless and enthusiastic work on its behalf.

His lessons were a source of inspiration, never dry, and always interlaced with amusing anecdotes. His maps, too, were very easy to remember and visualize. The British Isles were a triangle, France a square, and so on! However horrified the geographer may feel, I certainly learned my geography that way, although incidental to the real lesson, history!

Throughout my six years in the school, I lived in Mountain Ash, and this fact brings to mind another character - the Physics Master Mr. Towler. He was strict, often irritable, but fair. He lived, at that time, somewhere near Cardiff and, in consequence travelled up to Aberdare in the same train as I did. But never together, I saw to that! He claimed that there was ample time to get to the School from the Low Level station in time for the start of the first lesson. Anyone who saw him walking would not be surprised by the fact that he always succeeded! We were only kids, and could not be expected to keep up with him, even if we wished to do so which we certainly did not.

Naturally, we felt strongly about this when we often a little late, through no fault of our own. And we used to get our revenge on the return journey. He could not always leave school on time, whereas we could. In consequence, we had the glorious spectacle of Towler impatiently standing at the ticket barrier pleading with the collector to let him through to catch the train then due to leave. There was a strict rule at that station in those days. When the barrier was closed, no-one must be allowed through! And we would be cheering, and jeering, at the discomforted master. This occurred many a time. How cruel can schoolboys be. And yet, I often feel we were a little justified.

Incidentally, a few years ago, I was addressing a British Council gathering in South America on behalf of the Inter Parliamentary Union. After my speech, I was approached by two of those present, who asked me if I knew a Mr. Towler living somewhere in South Wales. Great was my surprise, and indeed theirs, when I discovered that they were referring to my Physics Master!

There was one master who made me work like a slave. And, indeed, he did the same to hundreds of other pupils. I refer to the French expert and later, Headmaster, Mr. Brinley Reynolds. I was his pupil for six years and I grew to admire and respect him. He was a hard taskmaster, and, much the annoyance of other masters, he expected you to devote nearly all of your homework time to his subject. I well recall his impatience with any intruder of his classroom, because such intrusion would be wasting valuable lesson time. I can remember to this day his daily irritation with the master whose duty it was to take the register to each classroom in the morning. Bryn could be positively rude, and he did not disguise his impatience for this very necessary duty, and then being performed by our new Sportsmaster. Bryn never seemed to accept it, but I've no doubt he thought differently when he himself became Head!

That new Sportsmaster was, of course, Mr. Excell. I owe a great debt to him for my love of Rugby, Cricket and Athletics. It was through his coaching that, although I was of very small stature, I played regularly for the First Rugby team, the First Cricket team and ran for the school Relay Team. Many years later I discovered what great artistic gifts he possessed, and I still count him among my friends. It is strange, yet natural, that I call him Mr Excell, although he still calls me "Arthur"!

Then there were "Billy Two" and "Terrible Tim" - Mr. W.R. Williams and Mr. Timothy Davies respectively. Both of these could and did instil the fear of God in all boys! I will always remember Billy Two's irreverent references to what he had no hesitation in saying was the irrelevance of School prayers. He certainly gave me the impression at that time of being an agnostic. I never discovered the truth.

Both of these masters could not suffer fools gladly, and many a hapless boy would spend lesson after lesson standing or sitting in the corner of the class, or worse (or better!) would be sent outside for the duration of the lesson.

I cannot fail to mention the one who had the greatest influence upon me, - Mr. Louis M. Thomas. My great and enduring love for English literature and poetry is due solely to him. In my opinion, looking back, he was not fitted for this competitive and exam-ridden age. I feel he could not attune himself to the rigours and demands of "Results"!

Then there was Bookkeeping and Shorthand. Mr. Hoggins. He got results, my goodness, he did! I believe he could have "headed" a great Commercial school. He would have produced Accountants and Company Secretaries by the score.

Hoggins had dull subjects to teach, but his lessons never proved to be dull, because we nearly always succeeded in getting him to tell us of his exploits in World War I. I cannot remember what service he served in, but I seemed to remember him on the deck of a submarine, leading a tank attack on land, or taking part in some night skirmish behind enemy lines!! However much he was, to use World War II parlance, "shooting the line", he knew what he was doing. He broke the tedium of very dull lessons, and we thoroughly enjoyed these many, though brief, interludes. He certainly could produce results and my one regret is that I did not take his advice to take up Accountancy as a profession.

He was of great bulk and was never loathe to use his bulk on we lesser mortals when having a game in the school yard, or a boxing lesson in the gym.

Last, but not least, there was the Headmaster! W. Charlton Cox - "Charlie". The modern school, I feel sure, cannot fully appreciate the terror that "Charlie" wrought in the recalcitrant boy. When you saw him approaching in the distance, even if you had done nothing wrong, you imagined you had! And you promptly turned the other way and disappeared into some convenient place for some lesser danger. That is if you did not hear a low pitched but resonant voice calling out "Boy!" You then stood still, trembling, heart fluttering. "Boy! what are you doing and where are you going?"

Over the years, one appreciated his compassion for his "boys" and his gradual acquisition of a personality and character fitted to provide a discipline which, I am told, is not characteristic of most modern secondary schools. Whatever his failings, if there were any, he was the type of Head that I would like to see back, if present conditions in today's schools would allow.

I have left out references to three who later became friends of mine. I have done so simply because I did not have the benefit of their tuition for a single lesson in the six years I was there.

Mr. P.E. Phillips "Pep" who, I am glad to say, is still around, Mr Bowen - "Sarso" and Ceredig Jones. These two latter gentlemen are no longer with us. I trust that the Divine will use their great talents in teaching Latin and Welsh. For some years I was a neighbour of Mr. Bowen, and many is the chat we had about the school.

Well, there we are. I have written of a period of my life of six years in the 1920's. I have made no mention of my schoolboy friends, some of whom became famous in their respective spheres. I have tried to portray, within the limitations of a few hundred words, the characteristics of teachers who influenced thousands of boys who passed through their capable hands. Perhaps I am nostalgic, but I treasure the memories of good and, accepting a true sense of values, also, in their allotted tasks in life, great men. Posterity always owes a lot to those who were teachers, and a great responsibility always falls upon each generation of teachers, a responsibility the vast majority of whom recognise.

My debt will never be fully repaid. I can only say that I have tried.