Archive for November, 2010

My father continues his reminiscences about his days at school in colonial Malaya:

So every year I climbed each rung of the ladder until I reached the sixth form;every year gaining some new knowledge that will make me competent enough to enter a university and thereby make something of my life. School life was quite uneventful; I was not involved in any fights with any of my school fellows and not being sporting did not win any trophies only book prizes for coming top or near top of the form in examinations. The school had some annual events. They were the annual Shakespeares play staged for one week in the Town Hall by the School Drama Society. The parts were all played by the school boys and some were very good indeed. I remember the part of Falstaff played by a stout lad and he was very good; he appeared to understand who and what Falstaff was. This boy is now grown-up and has become the second richest man in the country.

The only involvement by the teachers was as directors of the plays and costume designers as the boys had little knowledge of Elizabethen costumes. For every night of the performance it was a full house. Then there were the annual science exhibitionsput up by the students of the higher science forms. I use the word students because by then there were girls in the sixth forms arts and science. They were well attended by pupils of other schools and one day byadults. Most of the exhibits were to show science being used in unusual ways. Then there were the Scouts Gang Show performed not by the school scout troops only but the combined scout troops of the State. Entrance fees were collected for the scout fund. There were also interschool matches between the school and another in the country in football, rugby and cricket. There were the annual school sports daysfor the athletes and annual speech days for the studious.

Life at home was also quite uneventful. Father was strict and kept an eye on our studies and was always making sure that we were well grounded in grammar and subsequently Latin. There were two things that he and the family never stinted on and they were food and books. When Father was free he would scout around bookshops to look for books which will solve some problems he has encountered in his preparations to tutor us. A very good English grammar book was by a writer called Nestle (sounds like the milk people). We would break up a sentence and place each phrase or clause to the correct part of speech (adverbial clause, phrase, etc.)

Then there were the months we spent reading David Copperfield in the unabridged version. All four of us would sit round the table and Father would lie in his lazy chair and we wouldeach in turn read a few pages stopping to look up the meanings of words. Although Father knew most of the meanings he wanted to know and wanted us to know the exact meaning of the words that we encountered. Two words I still remember that I learnt from this reading were simultaneous and vicissitudes.We grew very fond of some of the characters notably the eccentric aunt Betsy Trotwood so that we name our two dogs, one Betsy and the other Trotty for Trotwood; Peggotty and his wife with their boat house in Yarmouth. I tended to compare Murdoch, Davids stepfather with our Father because Murdoch was strict and stern and harsh with David as sometimes Father was to us.

My father has written a number of blog posts about his childhood memories of colonial Malaya - you can read them in the Memories of Malaya series here on this blog

memmlya

Photo: thanks to lowfatbrains from flickr.com (CCL)