Sink Or Swim.......

Worcester Swimming Baths

It was an uncharacteristically bright Sunday October afternoon. I was going to make my way from my house via Lansdowne Road to play a matinee game of skittles at the Saracens Head pub in The Tything. As anyone who's tried parking around The Tything will tell you, it's a complete nightmare! So I decided to get on shanks's pony and take a diversion via Memory Lane. I've driven down Lansdowne and through the Tything in the car quite a few times, but I haven't actually walked around there in quite a few years, so this particular Sunday was promising to be a potential voyage of discovery. Maybe in this world of constant upheaval it would be yet another account that will testify to loss and perpetual local change? But In any case I started out from Astwood Road, and then took the right at the bottleneck crest of Rainbow Hill and headed down the sharp incline towards the canal.

As I walked down Lansdowne Road memories began flooding back like the trickling tide of waves on a distant bygone shore. My first innocuous memory was of Lasletts, the chip shop down on Laslett Street which had a reputation as being a great chippy but seemingly melted away from our consciousness into the twilight zone of chippy folklore. As I sauntered along Lansdowne I remembered Julie Creese and her brother Steve, who played the lead role of Oliver in the same titled musical at Sammies. This indirectly lead to another memory, that of seeing Steven Smith on stage in the main hall at Sammies/Elgar. He played the part of a Victorian bobby, complete with a truncheon, pork chop sideburns, a handlebar moustache, and a copper's helmet! How ironical was it that Steve would have played the old bill!!

Back in the day at Elbury Mount (in the mid-to-late 70's) we used to go swimming of a morning (on a Tuesday, Wednesday or a Thursday) at about 10 AM, where we would pile into the back of an Astons coach parked outside on Langdale Drive. We would make our way to the swimming baths on Sansome Walk, via Ambleside Drive, Troutbeck Drive, Tunnel Hill, Astwood Road and then down Lansdowne Road. The highlight of my morning was going down Tunnel Hill, where I would look across to see the railway yard at Tunnel junction leading across to Worcester Shrub Hill Station. The last great funny moment was riding over the canal bridge on Lansdowne Road when we were all launched in the air! When I saw the front of the Forester Arms pub I knew that our roller-coaster ride aboard Astons Coaches was over and we would all have to line up and make our way into the chlorine tinged swimming baths!

I made my way over the canal bridge at the bottom of Lansdowne Road. Crossing the bridge was a dull, lifeless affair compared to the exhilaration which I had enjoyed so dearly back in the day, when riding in a coach full of effervescent Elbury Mount children. By the side of the canal bridge is a children's playground, offset by a 5-a-side football field, and fenced away off of a cricket/football/rugby field owned by the Grammar School. I would ride past the field on our Astons coach and observe the young white cricket knights, suited up in a gladiatorial duel with red leather ball and a cricket bat. It was an exclusive club of the type that I was curious to watch but would never be invited to join.

By contrast to the exhilaration of Elbury Mount, Swimming at Samuel Southall Secondary School was a totally different kettle of fish. Our swimming class was first thing on a Monday morning. We had to make our own way down to the swimming baths, and in my case I would try to find the quickest way down there. One week I would walk down Lansdowne Road and the next week I would go via Church Road and Vigornia Avenue in a futile attempt to shave 5 minutes off my journey.

I walked up a footpath and an alley which led through Chestnut Walk. I then proceeded to take a right and walk up Northfield Street, it was then that I realised that I'd missed the swimming baths and was heading towards St. Mary's Church. The long spire of St. Mary's was the exclamation mark compared to the sedateness of the church hall. Back in the late 70's Simon Peters, Dave Taylor (on occasion) and myself, would go to judo practice at St. Mary's on a Monday and a Wednesday evening. Much to my chagrin the Worcester Judo Society had made way and moved away many years ago. It was now being occupied by Miss. Mountshaft and the Worcester Operatic Society, complete with greek theatre masks!

The skittles game which was the sole reason for my walk was a complete disaster, and it wasn't entirely unexpected. The team we played were called The Assassins, and we were duly dispatched! We've played this team before and if I'm honest I knew it was going to end up in a comprehensive defeat, it was just a matter of how many points we could salvage.

I made my way back from the Saracens Head, and this time I walked via St. Oswald's Road. At Elbury Mount we were taught about St. Oswald and St.Wulstan, so consequently I never got fed up of pointing out the street sign named after the canonised ex-bishop of Worcester! The Foresters Arms is still standing by the swimming baths but it has long ceased functioning as a public house. I looked over at the swimming baths and re-imagined all of us in the first years at Sammies, all bunched together in groups going over all the various TV programmes we had seen over the weekend. I'd be talking to Kevin Stride about the TV sci-fi series Buck Rogers! I'd being trying to do a naff impersonation of Twiki, ("Bee-dee Bee-dee Bee-dee Bee-dee Bee-dee! How about a surprise party?") and Kev would duly reply with his best Wilma Dearing impersonation! ("That's a good idea Twiki!!") That's the kind of ridiculous stuff we used to do to pass the time away!! (That's the kind of ridiculous stuff I still do.....) There was also Beaver, (Simon Smith) Stuart Webb, and many other of my mates from our class and from the first years who were all congregated together on that dank Monday morning stuck on a ramp trying to get in the line to get that all important locker space in the changing rooms!

The swimming part of the morning was peripheral. I enjoyed swimming practice when we actually got to swim, but the lessons I had were poor. Our instructor was the charmless PE teacher Mr. Johnson. He was about as charismatic as a pornstached dalek in flip flops, and had the vocal skills to match. Where everyone else would get to do all the exciting stuff like passing proficiency tests and swimming in their pyjamas, we were given a polystyrene float and told to, "Keep paddling" by some self-absorbed autocrat in sports shorts. 

For me, the highlight of the morning came after the swimming, where I would catch up with all my old mates from Elbury Mount who were scattered within the masses in the foyer. This sometimes consisted of watching Chris Doughty doing The Times crossword with Chris Chellacombe and Richard Oliver at his side desperately trying to decipher the cryptic clues! Sometimes I would also see my other mates from Elbury. There was only Andrew Orr and myself in 1-2, and I missed my old mates from Elbury, so it was awesome to see them again.

So after swimming we would have to make our way back to the school, and let's be honest, nobody was in a rush to go back to school!

Steven Smith (without the mutton chop sideboards!) and Richard Ellis

My own walk back home took me down Chestnut Street. Back when I was in the second years at sammies a new kid called Richard Ellis started in 2-2. After meeting this kid in a blue ski jacket, who was one of the only people who I ever knew who not only went on a skiing holiday, but went in the Dolomites! I knew this kid was going to be my new project! So I showed him the ropes and kept him away from some of the more troublesome influences in our school!! I used to pop over to Reggie's house every now and then, but I couldn't remember whether he lived over on Arboretum Road? I knew for sure that it wasn't down in Chestnut Street!

So I made my way back up Lansdowne Road and was thankful that it wasn't raining on my walk back home. One of the more disturbing images in my mind of swimming was watching our history teacher Mr. Whittle strolling around the swimming baths in a pair of Speedos.... In our first years, history was the last lesson of the day on a Monday afternoon. After watching Whittle parading around with his posing package on a Monday morning it was somewhat disconcerting to see him trying to teach us about prehistoric man on a Monday afternoon before home time.....

Sunday's skittle match was a loss, but the walk down Lansdowne Road through Chestnut Street, then around some of my earliest Elbury Mount/Samuel Southall Secondary School memories was priceless. We were all thrown in at the deep end in the Autumn of 1980, and it was comforting to see that some of us treaded water better than others.