We have across our city some very special schools, schools which are working hard to prepare the next generation to run the City of Milton Keynes. Winding our kaleidoscope forty and a bit years and obviously declaring an interest let me share some of the legends which the early generation of our New City have given to its heritage.
WHAT’S IN A NAME - L
E O N:
When I joined the teaching staff of Leon School on Bletchley’s Lakes Estate something very special was in the advance stages of preparation. Headed by PE teacher Trevor Garner a group of students were that summer planning to drive from Fern Grove to the foot of Mount Everest. L-E-O-N = Leon Expedition Overland Nepal. What an amazing ambition this was. Unfortunately conflict in Afghanistan prevented the team crossing its border but still the expedition is something no other Milton Keynes school has been able to equal. I am writing this paragraph hoping to lift this amazing achievement by Trevor Garner and the team out of obscurity. How many people from the 1970’s remember Leon Expedition Overland Nepal ? Try making an on-line search, Google has never heard of it.
Leon School today likes to call itself the Sir Herbert Leon Academy. In celebrating the heritage given to Milton Keynes by Sir Herbert this is to be applauded but it was not Sir Herbert Leon but Lady Fanny Leon who was heavily involved in the work of the school. I speak about that in a different twist of our kaleidoscope IN SEARCH OF THE LEONS. Actually Leon School taking the name is something of a legend in its own right.
In wartime Milton Keynes (Bletchley of course in those pre-new city days) the school was Bletchley Road School. Bletchley Road became Queensway when Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II made one of her many visits to our home city. The school evolved to become Bletchley Secondary School. In the earlier chapter EDUCATING A NEW CITY I share a document given to me by Leon Legend Daphne Capp recording the opening of school’s new site on the developing Lakes Estate.
The old school, today the site of Knowles School, backs onto Leon Recreation Ground which was gifted to the town by Herbert Leon in early1898 so there was a firm geographical attachment. Legend Says that Headmaster David Bradshaw initiated the idea to lift the name and use it ton christen the new site. It was LEON taken for the name so embracing the heritage given by Sir Herbert Leon and the deep involvement of Lady Leon. When Bruce Abbott became headmaster in 1981 he had pictures of both Sir Herbert Leon and Lady Fanny Leon on his office wall, both looking down on the daily running of the school.
The Leon marriage was a happy one but I wonder if a family argument may have arisen when the school took on just Sir Herbert’s name. He, of course, would have been very proud but I am sure Lady Leon who was a forceful personality would have clearly pointed out she was the one involved in the school and not her husband.
CARRY ON CAMPING:
In the old days films were a screened using a clattering 16mm Bell and Howell projector. One evening every week Bletchley Youth Centre ran a film club. Barry Field, who ran the centre, hired the film for a full week then sub-let it to other organisations to tie round their own Bell and Howell machines. I suggested to Headmaster Bradshaw that we could have a film club after school in the lecture theatre. We would charge an admission fee, I think it was 10p but it may have been 5p, and give the money to Bletchley Youth Centre. He gave the idea his royal ascent.
Thank goodness Mr Bradshaw was not into watching films, he would have firmly disapproved of the first film shown Carry On Camping and closed the film club down immediately. When Barbra Windsor catapulted her bra across the screen during a morning exercise that was not something teenagers should be allowed to watch !
The film club was a great success during the Spring Term of 1976 but did not run in the summer and did not come back the next school year.
For three summers the school had Leon Camp, each with more than one hundred teenagers in tents above the sea in North Cornwall. Mrs Anderson, former Leon Teacher, re you reading this ? Do you remember when a group of students took some fish from Padstow Market and placed them around the engine of a van you drove back to Milton Keynes from Cornwall ? Did you know we teachers were all in on the joke. If you ask me there was far more humour in that than the producers put into Carry On Camping !
LEON DISCO:
During my interview to join the staff of Leon School Headmaster Bradshaw told me that he ran a school disco every Tuesday evening and I may like to help. Translated into interview terminology that mean help at the disco and I will give you the job. Did I have any choice ?
Bradshaw didn’t actually run the disco, he hired a local mobile disco to play the music and flash the lights. From seven o’clock to nine o’clock each Tuesday evening he and I mingles with the teenagers as bouncers keeping law and order. The wife of the school caretaker ran the tuck shop.
When the last track was played it was my job to switch on the lights and see all the kids safely off the premises. Headmaster Bradshaw ? His role was to grab a broom and begin sweeping up all the empty crisp packets and chocolate wrappers from the tuck shop sales. How many headmasters today, headmistresses for that matter, know what a broom is let alone how to use one ! Bradshaw was a special man and without any doubt at all a key factor in creating our Leon Legend.
When it comes to legend it was Bradshaw who founded Leon Disco. Some think it was my idea but no it wasn’t. Headmaster Bradshaw was the genius behind it, he simply dumped it on me and told me to make it happen.
Lunch hours for schools in the disco seventies were ninety minutes long. During my teaching practice at Wilton School (Now Lord Grey) there was a lunchtime youth club. Bradshaw thought a daily lunchtime disco would be a good way to keep the kids out of trouble. It worked ! He put up the cash from the school fund to buy equipment which I got from MAN Music in Duncombe Street. Man – Marshall (As in the son of Jim Marshall) and Nun. I appointed some teenage disc jockeys and charged 2p admission to fund the weekly purchase of seven inch vinyl records from Weatherhead’s in Queensway.
What
was the very first record played on the twin deck of Leon Disco ? I honestly can not remember but I do know an
early hit was Video Killed The Radio Star by The Buggles.
The lunchtime disco continued when Mr Bradshaw retired and Headmaster Abbott took over. When the length of the lunch hour was reduced to an hour the music migrated to evening events a bit like it had been back in 1976.
Nothing to do with the disco but I brought into school a gentleman to talk about a new charity he was setting up in Milton Keynes. He truly inspired the teenagers who came to me asking if we could run a twenty-four hour sponsored disco in support of that new charity. Headmaster Abbott gave his permission.
What was that charity ? Oh, didn’t I tell you. It was Willen Hospice. Leon School with its legendary disco ran one of the very first fund raising events for Willen Hospice. Leon School, a school of legend !
SCHOOL TIMETABLE:
The
three R’s – Reading wRiting and aRithmetic. We had those at Leon in its early days but under
Headmaster Bradshaw the curriculum also included – wait for it…
Rural
Studies
Roadcraft
Design
For Living – aka Design For Dying
Integrated
Studies – aka Disintegrated Studies
Into
Europe
Let me explain.
Milton Keynes New City was predominately rural in the late 1970’s. Bletchley’s Estate at the southernmost tip of development had farming on three sides. Wind back to the second world war and its previous location on Bletchley Road the school had been very much into digging for victory. Looking at the school from Fern Grove, at the far end of the site on the left was the rural studies unit preparing students to look after chickens and the odd concrete cow. When teacher Wilf Rose retired the department closed down.
Leon’s curriculum was sexist ! Lads studied roadcraft so they could change spark plugs on their cars and if they were very clever on leaving school could win an apprentice at Wolverton Works maintaining the railway system. Tuning the carburettor on the family car or tapping wheels on railway carriages was not a job for young ladies so while the boys were doing roadcraft they did design for living training as housewives and being able to cook their husbands a meal when they came back from crafting the roads at Wolverton Works.
Integrated studies. History, Geography, English and Religious Education all rolled into one with Leon’s unique style of disintegrated studies.
As Britain foolishly prepared to join the European Union Headmaster Bradshaw and Head of Lower School Mrs Ballenger decided students need to prepare by studying the history, geography and music of all members states. Every week for one hour students in years 8 and 9 sat in the lower school lecture theatre while Bradshaw and Ballenger expounded the virtues of Europe. How on earth did they manage to spin our a lecture on the music of Belgium for an hour !
When our nation came to its senses and Brexit gave us back our independence did Leon by any chance run Out of Europe !
When Headmaster Abbott took over a more normal timetable was introduced.
MOTORBIKE CLUB:
A Milton Keynes legend today is our Barrel Bikers but before many of them were born Headmaster Bradshaw was a biker. Taking his hobby of cruising the early roads of Milton Keynes he ran an afterschool club where kids could rip up the school field on motor bikes. Not something the PE staff approved of ! Not a school project I am pleased to say I was involved in.
HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II
AND THE VISIT THAT NEVER WAS:
In an
earlier chapter I spoke of Mayor Brian Baldry meeting the royal train at
Bletchley Station to welcome Her Majesty to the new city of Milton Keynes. It
was a weekday, and at the time Mr D B Bradshaw was headmaster. Leon is adjacent
to the railway line along which the Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh would
travel before reaching Bletchley and Mayor Baldry. We staff wanted to take our
classes out onto the field to wave at the royal train. Headmaster Bradshaw did
not think this was a justifiable reason to take the kids away from the Three
R's.
Staff
in the school office, however, were determined to change his mind. I think his
secretary threatened to put a typo into every one of his letters until the end
of term if Headmaster Bradshaw did not allow the entire school to wave at the
royal train. A message was quickly sent round the classrooms, so we all
decamped onto the field.
We
enthusiastically waved at all trains be they an express or a train scheduled to
stop at every blade of grass. We waved at good trains and we even waved at a
bin lorry driving along Drayton Road. But we did not wave at the royal train.
By the time Leon School was waving Her Majesty was long gone and the royal train
was parked up in a siding at Bletchley Station, possibly the same one that had
housed the Great Train Robbery’s Travelling Post Office. An abundance of egg
was left on an abundance of faces !
After school and joking about the royal wave that never was, I was driving along Saxon Street behind The Brunel Centre in Bletchley when a black car approached then passed me by on the other side of the road. There she was sitting in the back seat, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Perhaps as her train slowed towards Bletchley Station she saw the school, Leon School, on her right. Perhaps she wondered why there were no kids there waving to greet her. Perhaps.
LEON SCHOOL AND THE COLD WAR:
The nuclear attack siren during the cold war was located on the roof of Leon School tower block and its dining room a designated area within the civil defence strategy if there were was to be a third world war. But Leon School had its own spy network helping to keep the war cold. Network ? Well two anyway. Spies ? Wives of spies. Legend ? Actually this is true.
Mrs Marg Ballenger, Head of Lower School, walked in one morning and said that her husband was being posted to Botswana and she would, therefore, be leaving at the end of the week. He worked for GCHQ. Was it really Botswana where he was being sent.
Mrs Olive Whitford, English Teacher, used to say that her husband worked for the security services. He was an accountant. His job was to go round the world editing the books of the spies !
IN ON THE GROUND FLOOR – OR
SHOULD THAT BE UP IN THE SKY:
I was contacted one day by Milton Keynes Development Corporation asking if someone could come into my year group and take an assembly. The Development Corporation was setting up a trust which would support good causes across the city once its development was complete. That trust became today’s legendary Milton Keynes Community Foundation, Leon School was right in on the ground floor.
Also on the ground were the Leonite students but it was the helicopter up in the air that took the photograph.
I was very busy working in my office when Headmaster Abbott walked in. The following day our first school visit to Sutter Junior High School in Sacramento California was happening and I was busy making final arrangements.
“A newspaper had chartered a helicopter,” Abbott explained. “Tomorrow is Red Nose Day and I want you to take your entire year group out onto the field, stand them in lines to spell red nose and then the helicopter will fly over and take pictures.”
What ! What was Red Nose Day ? This was the first such event and I had never heard about it.
“I’m really, really busy can’t you get another year group to do it.”
“No, it’s your job now make it happen.”
So when you see Red Nose Day, perhaps these days better known as Comic Relief, remember that Leon School added this to its portfolio of legend.”
PAN AM FLIGHT 103:
What has the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerby on 21st December 1988 got to do with Leon School ?
The school’s first California exchange was made by way of a Pan Am flight from London Heathrow to San Francisco. This was my very first long-haul flight, I was in charge of a group of excited teenagers, nervous comes nowhere near describing my situation. Boarding the aircraft the Purser picked out our group and did everything possible to give us a happy, relaxed flight while maintain the excitement of our adventure.
When we returned to England and to Leon School we learned that this lovely lady had written to Headmaster Abbott saying what a pleasure it was to have his school students on her aircraft. She was the purser on Pan American Flight 103 when terrorists destroyed it eighteen months later.
CAN YOU SWIM:
I cannot swim ! In the area where I grew up there was no swimming pool. When the Lakes Estate opened its Leon School it had its own swimming pool, something unique for a school in its day. But you need more than a pool to teach someone to swim. Enter Doreen Adcock. Did you grow up on the Lakes Estate ? Did you grow up in South Milton Keynes ? Can you swim ? Without Doreen Adcock you probably would not be able to swim. Doreen lifted Leon’s swimming pool as she ran a club teaching teenagers how to swim.
When the Olympic Games came to London in 2012 Doreen Adcock was one of those who carried its flame through Milton Keynes.
Doreen’s motto was that no child was too difficult or disabled to teach. It would be difficult to count how many people she taught to swim. I wish she had taught me.
TINNED HARVEST FESTIVAL:
Today tinned harvest festivals in support of the Food Bank are common in schools. There was no Food Bank in our society when Leon School began its autumn tinned harvest festivals, the gift were given to a local care home to be given to the elderly. Another first, another Leon Legend.
ROMANIAN ORPHANS:
When the Berlin Wall came down we began to see so terrifying images within the former Eastern Bloc. Leon RE Teacher Peter Cutler launched an aid appeal from his church to send aid to orphans in Romania, he was part of the team that drove the aid truck across Europe. His kindness then inspired Leon School to send its own aid truck to help children in this former communist state. I was part of the driving team along with Peter and his son. It remains such a special memory for me but that lorry packed with gifts of love is another, a special legend from Leon School.
WAR OF THE WORLDS:
If you came from a wealthy family the like of Boris Johnson and went to Eton School you are
Leon School ? We are Leonites. Yes, I coined the phrase but hundreds have adopted it to describe their time in this legendary Milton Keynes school. The thing about being a Leonite boasts something Etonians, Harrovians and Stoics are not able to claim. Leonite encompasses both students and staff. Students and staff but with one proviso, you have to love your school.
Daphne Capp, once head of music at Leon School is perhaps the most Legendary Leonite of all. Daphne is a dear friend, her late husband played the organ at my wedding in 1978. When it came to organising Daphne was the Queen of the Leonites. The musical performances that came from her department drew huge crowds, perhaps the most celebrated of all time is the legendary Leon performance of Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds in Bletchley Leisure Centre.
Music right across Milton Keynes schools is something to be applauded, from The Radcliffe Rollers to Uptown Funk at Oakgrove School we built this city on rock and roll. Leon played its part.
LEON FIRE:
As I pulled into the car park early one morning there were a couple of fire engines there before me. I guessed it was some kind of pre-school fire drill but as I saw the yellow hoses about the area it was likely something more. Then Headmaster Bradshaw strode towards me. “It started in your office !” He said.
Hell ! What had I forgotten to switch off the day before.
It was actually a case of arson. Somebody broke in and set fire to papers in my office filing cabinet. I doubt the person responsible intended such but the school hall and adjacent offices were destroyed. The cops never did find out who did it. We’ll let the Leon Fire become a forgotten legend shall we.
MATRON:
A key member of staff at Leon School was Matron. Over the years there were several, all lovely, special people. A school can function if its headmaster is away at a meeting, if its head of PE is off playing football or a head of year sitting in his office writing about the school’s legends but Matron is on duty from the moment the first student enters the building to when the last leaves. I would like to share a few anecdotes around one particular Matron.
Matron was a special lady, respected by staff and loved by the kids. Outside school she was busy in the community including being a prison visitor. One day a lad came to me and explained he had been suffering with a headache for a couple of days. “I’ve taken ten Paracetamol and it still won’t go away.”
Overriding his objections I marched him to Matron. She told me to fetch my car and drive them both to the hospital. This macho fifteen year old was scared of needles and kept insisting he would put up with his headache. Matron explained if he did not go to hospital he would not have a head to ache ! He was fine but I bet even today he is not into taking paracetamol.
I was walking near to the school hall during lesson change over. As the kids moved through the corridor, I must add in an orderly but crowded way, a lad was pushed into a window which broke. A slither of glass cut his arm. He did not collapse but felt faint and could not walk. Somehow I found the strength to pick him up and carry him to Matron’s room. As I entered Matron screed into the main office, “Ambulance !” She went with him to A and E, all was well. The lovely bit of this story is how the young man a day or so later went out of his way to thank both Matron and myself for our help.
Now get ready to smile as I twist the kaleidoscope for the next tale.
Picture the scene, a class of teenagers hard at work writing essays. Noses to the grindstone and pens to paper. I am ambling around the room, somewhat aimlessly as everyone is hard at work.
“Sir, I’m not feeling well.”
“You’re OK, keep writing.”
“But Sir I’m feeling very ill.”
“Get on with your work “
The lad then groaned, fell to the floor and writhed in agony. In front of him was a pool of sick. I dashed to the phone outside the classroom and called the office, “Crash bleep Matron and send her to English Room Four.”
Within moments Matron arrived. She was a larger lads and having run across the school was significantly out of breath. The lad sad up, waved a sheet of artificial joke vomit in the air and giggles, “Got ya !” The class, all members obviously in on the prank, roared with laughter. I also laughed. Matron did not laugh, she gave that fourteen year old hell ! Let me tell you that was nothing to what she gave me later when she summonsed me to her room !
MATCHSTALK MEN AND MATCHSTALK
CATS AND DOGS:
I
am not an art teacher, my wife Maureen taught art. At school myself art was the
only subject I failed. Who is your favourite artist ? For me it is L S Lowry.
Lowry died on 23rd February 1976. A year later Brian and Michael had
a fabulous hit with Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs. We still had
pop music in those day and although this is hardly rock and roll every Leon
teenager knew the song.
I had a brilliant idea for a piece of creative writing. I lined all of my class up to look out of the window at Serpentine Court across the road. I then played Brian and Michael saying to my students, “Imagine how Lowry would see everything. When the music stops I want you to sit down and describe what you saw using words to explain the view from Lowry’s artistic sight.” Brilliant idea for a creative writing lesson or what !
The classroom door opened and Headmaster Bradshaw came in, “Mr Ashford why is all your class looking out of the window !” As I tried to explain I wondered if Mr Bradshaw had ever hear of L S Lowry, he certainly had never heard of Brian and Michael !
PEANUT PUSH:
I’m
going to share a photograph with you. Fingers crossed Amazon formats it
properly within the text.
I had been at Leon School for a little over two terms when I knocked on Headmaster Bradshaw’s office door. “I am a bit bored, I need more to do. Do you have any suggestions Mr Bradshaw ?”
“Well there’s a vacancy for a head of year if you are interested !”
Thank goodness I was sitting down. I was being elevated from a lowly classroom teacher to being in charge of over three hundred pupils.
“Could you do that ?”
“Er,
yes !”
Look at that arrogant, newly appointed Head of Year strutting about the school sports hall. Thank you to the Leonite from the late 1970’s who is also in the picture and recently gave me this copy.
I served under two headmasters at Leon School, David Bradshaw and Bruce Abbott, two totally different but dedicated and first class headmasters. They shared a character trait as far as I am concerned, they would come up with ideas and turn to me saying make it happen ! From Leon Dinosaur to Leon Disco to Red Nose Day. This was something students also had within their makeup. From Willen Hospice Twenty Four Hour Disco to Sponsored Peanut Push.
That’s what the photograph above is all about. The school was in the process of fund raising to buy a mini-‘bus. As a novice head of year a group came to me with an idea to push peanuts around the vast school sports hall sponsored to raise money for the mini-‘bus. It was a great success, thank you to that group of Leon School students for allowing me to be a part of it.
TIME TO FIX IT:
Another visit to my office from a headmaster, Mr Abbott on this occasion, to my office saying fix it. He handed me a letter from BBC Television.
(What I am now about to relate to some will be politically incorrect but it happened, was a bit of fun and became a legend. The side of the show’s presenter we all now know came nowhere near.)
A young lady had written to Jim’ll Fix It asking if she could meet her favourite pop group. Jim said he would fix it and the production team wanted it to happen in school so all her class mates could meet the pop idols with her.
Abbott, myself and the teacher who would be with the class at the time had to sign contracts of confidentiality with the BBC. I am thinking that the Official Secrets Act Alan Turing and his mates had to sign in Bletchley Park was nothing compared to that we signed in Leon School.
Bruce and I next had a secret meeting in the school one Sunday afternoon with the production and camera team. A plan was made. The pop group, sorry I can not remember the name, it may have been Wet Wet Wet but then it may not have been. Anyway, they would be sneaked into my office where I would keep them hidden until the given time. The class would be assembled in the lecture theatre for a supposed Geography lesson. I would then take the group to the lecture theatre where they would burst in and whisk the young lady away in a helicopter to a party.
The BBC organised the helicopter but I was charged with the plan to obtain advance permission for it to land. Red Does Day may have been able to fly overhead but this whirlybird had to land. I spoke with Air Traffic Control who said as the helicopter would come into land over the railway I needed a safety assessment just in case it crashed into the overhead power lines. With the considerable help of my secretary Mrs Cindy Palmer we were allowed for just a short space of time to open Leon Airport on Bletchley’s Lakes Estate.
When the pop group arrived I had prepared my office to make them comfortable. I did not realise I needed to convert my office into a high security prison.
No, you do not need the loo, cross your legs !
If you want a can of Coke tough luck the vending machine is turned off during lesson time.
And for goodness sake keep your voices down !
Problem ! The helicopter charter company said the cloud base was too low for a safe landing to be made on the field. The BBC came up with Plan B. I was to hire a stretched limo which the group would use to take their guest, he parents by the way were in on the plot, to the television studio in London. Where the heck in Milton Keynes would I find at short notice a stretched limo ? Nightmare ! Fortunately the best school secretary in all of our New City was able to FIX IT !
Time then for me to take the pop group and TV cameraman from my office to the lecture theatre. This was supposed to be a quick and secret walk from one side of the school to the other but the cameraman kept wanting to take shots and the pop group was so naughty In nearly put the whole lot on detention. They waved at anyone they could see at any distance. Soon the jungle drums began to beak: Ashford’s got a bunch of pop stars with him ! Where was Headmaster Abbott ? Safely hiding in his office.
I am totally unable as I write now to be able to find words capable of expressing my relief when that white stretched limonene pulled out of the carpark and away down Fern Grove.
Phew !
CALIFORNIA HERE WE COME – AND
A BIT FURTHER AS WELL:
When you were a kid where did you go on school trips ? I had two very exciting adventures in my teenage years, one to Coventry Cathedral and one to tour the Liverpool Docks. There was a time in the 1980’s and 1990’s when Leon School was a branch of Thomas Cook Travel !
Student
Ambassadors to California, four separate visits to America’s West Coast where
students; walked the Golden Gate Bridge, spent time in Alcatraz in San
Francisco Bay, panned for gold at Sutter’s Fort where the 1849 Gold Rush
started, drove through the Nevada Desert to Virginia City where Samuel
Langhorne Clemens aka Mark Twain was once the editor of its local newspaper,
down South to Disneyland in California, the Hollywood Bowl and Great Universal
Studios. Further south through San Diego
and into Tijuana Mexico before moving to Las Vegas, walking The Strip and
flying down The Grand Canyon. Oh, I nearly forgot up north to the Giant
California Redwoods. What a shame Leonites never nicked a sapling or two to
plant in Central Milton Keynes and hide its hideous architectural folly.
But Leon Thomas Cook did not stop there. Cairo and the Tutankhamun Museum, the pyramids and the sphynx, off to the Aswan Damn and the Valley of the Kings.
Unfortunately the school travel company was taken over so the planned trip to the Great Wall of China never happened.
Around the world in eighty days – perhaps that needs to be rewritten Around the world with Leon School !
Of course we made it to Italy, Holland and the likes, we even went to Legoland in Denmark but it was the Disney Fliers that were king. After school Friday everyone went home, grabbed some tea and a change of clothes before heading back to school. A fleet of coaches would be waiting, four or five, then down to Dover for an overnight crossing and drive to Disneyland Paris. A day of fun with Mickey Mouse and riding with the Pirates of the Caribbean before an overnight drive back to school. Home and crash out before school again on Monday morning. For a time these Disney Fliers were legends in their own time.
Around the world with Leon School !
LEON THE SCHOOL OF LOVE:
My daughter was born in 1983 with chronic renal failure. She was in and out of hospital, that hospital being Guys in London. I was always taking time off work to drive her down to clinic appointments or to support Maureen when Rebekah was on the ward.
One day Headmaster Abbott took me to one side. “Will you stop filing for unpaid leave,” he said. “Just tell me you are not coming in and you’ll be paid.” Leon the school of love.
After two failed transplants the hospital decided Beck’s best chance was from a live donor, that live donor being yours truly. The school board of governors granted me three months paid leave, employed a former deputy headmaster to take my classes and temporarily assigned a member of staff to take on my duties as head of year. Leon the school of love.
“You are too soft with your kids,” that stand in year head said. “Too friendly with them and they take liberties. I’ll sort them out ready for when you come back.”
I had been away for less than a week when the medics told me the chance of success was not string enough to be medically acceptable. I was devastated, how I managed to drive back to Milton Keynes from London I have no idea. I took a day off then went back to work.
“I am so deeply sorry,” Headmaster Abbot said, “but I am glad you are back. Your year group has been in rebellion. If they think that is the way to support you then they are wrong.”
“If those are your year group then you can keep them !” My stand in said. “I want nothing to do with them.”
It was the start of the day, assembly. The year group was sitting in the hall, I was standing outside terrified. What was I going to say ? As I walked towards the front I could hear: What’s he doing here ? I thought he was gone until next term ? The moment I finished speaking a wave of love flooded across the room to engulf me. Those wonderful teenagers supported me and gave my whole family strength.
Leon School – the school of love.
Well Sir Herbert Leon, Lady Fanny Leon did that make you proud ? More than that did it make you SMILE ?
How many schools are there in
the City of Milton Keynes today ? I don’t have a clue. Which school did you go
to ? What are its legends ? Go out and find them then share them with the world
as I have done here for Leon School.
