The Office

Above the door to Tim Patton’s office were two coloured lights - a couple of old fashioned miniature bulbs, mounted in a box with coloured cellophane over them and wired to two switches screwed to his desk. When a pupil was sent to see him they would knock and then turn their nervous gaze upward. If the red light lit up the boy would have to wait; if it were green he would enter. The system struck me as quite a novelty at the time and in its sticky-taped, aging, cobbled-togetherness it gave some hint of what lay beyond the door. Tim’s office was legendary. It was such an unmistakeable embodiment of the man’s passions and eccentricities that when he retired in 1994 an artist and model-maker parent presented him with a perfect, scale replica of the room in a shoebox-sized, glass topped cabinet. It was the perfect gift: a tribute that recognised that this was a man best defined not by his achievements in the field of education, but rather by a force of character of which the very fabric of the school was merely an extension.

As the parent who created that wonderful diorama recognised, his personality was distilled within those four walls. As I remember the room was quite dimly lit. I think that there were windows on the left wall and there was definitely one at the back, but they were high up and either partially covered or so dusty that they allowed little light. On the right hand side as you entered was a full-scale cut-out of Marcel Marceau as Bip the Clown, standing in his most recognisable pose: feet perpendicular to each other, front knee bent, leading arm raised with palm facing up, the other hand resting on his hip. It was a stance that Tim himself often favoured when addressing us. Mime was one of his passions and as well as Marcel Marceau there were several posters advertising the school mime troupe, The Mime Machine, who performed every year outside the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The only other posters I can specifically recall included several Guinness advertisements from the “Guinness Is Good For You” days and a psychedelic Grateful Dead image, but there were many more. Something of the man’s approach to decoration can be surmised from the manner in which these posters were attached to the wall. Most of them must have been put up at least twenty years previously, but rather than finding any permanent means of adhesive (another headmaster, unconventional enough to have a Grateful Dead poster in his office but still more conventional than Tim, might have had the thing mounted behind glass, for example) he used sellotape. Reams and reams of the stuff. I imagine that at first there had been merely one or two pieces on each corner, but sellotape dries out, turns yellow and peels after a while and every time this happened Tim simply applied more. By the time I was at the school there was a layer an inch thick on the corner of each poster. By now you may have guessed that Tim was both a lifelong bachelor and a heavy drinker.

On either side of the room were giant, broken backed sofas, which were very difficult to get out of once you had sat down. Tim often taught classes in his office and pupils would rush to secure seats on these ratty pieces of furniture; those who missed out had to sit cross-legged on the floor. The office also served as a staff common room and after hours many of the teachers would congregate there to drink Tim’s beer and smoke. His supply of Guinness was colossal and took up a third of the prefect’s room, just down the corridor. It was testament to the innocence of the school that it never once occurred to me that storing several hundred cans of beer openly in a within-bounds area, frequented by twelve year olds, was in any way risky or foolish. In all my time there I never heard of any being stolen or drunk by pupils and the only incident I can recall was when my friend Patrick accidentally stabbed a can with a pool cue. Tim shouted at him at length for that misdemeanour, which at the time I considered to be bad luck on Patrick but not especially unfair.

At the back of the room was Tim’s desk, on which there was a large assortment of knick-knacks, mostly presents from parents and including at least one hash pipe. Behind the desk and on either side, and generally dotted around the room anywhere there was a bit of space, were unruly piles of books and newspapers yellow with age. The overall effect was one of bohemian semi-squalor. Very few teachers, I think, would be able to hold the attention of a bunch of twelve or thirteen year olds in a room with as many distractions as that one had.

Next time: The Temper of Tim/ Wit and Wisdom

Introduction

Perhaps because I will be twenty nine next week (and therefore, without a shadow of a doubt, Nearly Thirty), lately I have been thinking a lot about my school days and in particular my prep school, St. Anthony’s. At the time I attended, between 1990 and 1994, St. Anthony’s was rather a unique place, a fact that I was aware of even at the time but that has become more obvious as the years have passed. There were many excellent and likable teachers at St. Anthony’s but this memoir is largely centered on the headmaster of the time, a man named Tim Patton and someone who, I think I can safely say, will never be forgotten by those who knew him. I recently Googled his name and could find no reference to him at all. Despite the fact that the internet was in its infancy when he retired (the same year I left the school) he occupies such an exalted place and is such a legendary figure in my mind that it's inconceivable to me that there isn't some sort of fansite or Facebook group. It seems so wrong that I feel compelled to do something about it, hence this blog.

My memories are likely faulty, riddled with holes, and naturally are completely subjective to my experience. I liked Tim a lot but I know that not everyone felt the same way. I intend to try and get as many of my old schoolmates as possible to read this and I invite them all to correct, fill in gaps, or disagree with my account.

An English teacher by training (or at least that's what I assume, but thinking about it that assumption may be ill-founded) Tim was, as is common in many small private prep schools, both headmaster and an acting form teacher. Like most inspiring teachers he often lacked professionalism. He favoured certain pupils above others and made little attempt to hide his preferences. I had the great fortune to be both in his form in my final year and liked by him. He encouraged me in my creative writing, indulged me in my regular bouts of classroom showing-off, probably underestimated my academic potential but not nearly as much as my parents would have me believe (inasmuch as they probably overestimated it), shouted at me only when I deserved it and always laughed it off afterwards, and called me “Ingy-baby” when he was feeling jocular. He had sideburns of the style favoured by Lemmy from Motorhead (basically a full beard with a one inch stripe shaved down the centre of the chin), wore the remaining hair on his head long and tied in a pony-tail, and made us read Jonathon Livingstone Seagull¹ in English class. He was absolutely a product of the sixties and it was his anachronistic tastes and liberal ethos that made the school what it was.

Next time: The Office

For the record, and to my acute embarrassment, I have to admit that I absolutely loved Jonathon Livingstone Seagull. It was many years before I had an inkling that there was anything remotely naff or mawkish about it, despite my father practically rolling on the floor laughing when he heard what we had been studying.