The 7 ages of
Frank Selkirk
I think I started school at the Emmanuel School in Loughborough with Miss Kirk as my teacher. When we moved to Northampton it was to Abingdon Park School.
I used to have some school reports from there which could confirm some detail, but I’ve hidden them away - possibly permanently, ‘cos I wasn’t an outstanding student then. But maybe some excuse? (See “The Infant”) [Photo c 1947:l - Andrew, Stuart, Frank]
After a year or two there I moved to a boys Preparatory School called “Akeley Wood”: situated in what we understood to have been the hunting lodge for the Duke of Buckingham . His home has become Stowe School. (The web site for the present Akeley Wood School(*) states the building was an Elizabethan mansion. My recollection was that it was more mock-Tudor, but memory is fallible)
Fees for boarding were £60 a term with 60 or so pupils. (I was led to understand that my parents admired the school and its Head so much that they helped prevent “Cash Flow” closure. Akeley Wood is now a large co-educational day school). [Some more detail is on my brother Andrew’s site: see arls.org.uk] (N.B. By happy chance one of the recent teachers of the new Akeley Wood school is now a friend in Spain…)
Whilst I recall little of lesson there, happy memories abound of roller-skating in the stables hall, spending hours perfecting kicking a rugby ball over the bar from the half-way touch-line, spending nights in canvas tents set up near large rhododendron bushes, playing with model racing cars on piles of building sand, making camp fires so that we could cook potatoes and “twists” and building dens in the bracken-infested surrounds. Happy days! Probably the best part of my whole educational time. One other thing I still recall: a school musical play when pre “Kismet” good use was made of Borodin’s music - especially for “Now the golden road reaches Samarkand”.
Andrew and Stuart were both at Akeley Wood, though Andrew had left (I think) before Stuart arrived.
We were all booked to move on to Bryanston School, but as the Head of Akeley Wood was so convinced of Andrew’s expertise in classics that it was recommended he went to Rugby as the classics-speciality school instead.
Stuart & I both duly followed Andrew there, though both managed to achieve “bottom of the bottom form” status there in our first term.
So: Rugby School. A strange place, beloved by some and remembered by others - such as me - to be memorable in parts.
However I was fortunate enough to start my travels in school holidays: firstly to La Roche Posay de Bains in August 1955 (when my first passport was issued)
and then in 1956 to Soltau when I made lasting friendships to this day with the Kock family
Maybe it didn’t help but it was not until I was about 15 and realised that I couldn't read traffic signs properly when on my bicycle that it was established that I was short-sighted . I duly got a reasonable handful of “O” levels and moved on to do “A” levels in science subjects.
Now those who know me realise that I’m not a great conformist. When I found better / quicker ways to do things in “practicals” then I did so - conforming only insofar that I wrote up the results as if I had worked conventionally. Well the damage duly arrived when during the “A” level Biology practical I had a piece of equipment which did not work. Instead of immediately reporting such I spent a long while investigating. So there was simply insufficient time to carry out the rest of the exam with a modicum of quality and no wonder I did not get a satisfactory result. Ah, well, 2 “A” levels and an “O” in biology prevented my moving to study Plant Ecology at university.
No great athlete - I failed in my ambition to get a cricket ball through a window - I concentrated more on artistic activities: taking singing lessons on the excuse that small fingers were no good for violin-playing etc (I had spent a couple of years at the Northampton violin school when 7 & 8). I took part in dramatics, and the concerts I attended were truly formative: CBSO, LSO, Julian Bream etc.
But there was one other significant feature: conforming into being confirmed as a full Church of England member I duly took my promises seriously and went to chapel as often as I could, taking the duties of sacristan. [Hence the university post-RAF]
But the holidays were another matter! The family moved just as I was starting at Rugby to a run-down, hilly farm in Devon. The joy of being able to take a spade and do whatever I liked to ditches etc: this is the inspiration to my “retirement” years having a run-down farm in South-East Spain. After a couple of years my parents decided they enjoyed farming so moved to a far more professional location just inside Dorset from Devon & Somerset.
