Rabbit hole

It's getting very hot and I'm not going out. Today I've been sitting in front of the computer doing stuff - like looking at my bank account and   ordering something off Amazon Prime. Then I thought I ought to do something more worthwhile.

I've been doing more poetry since I came back from the Far North and today I thought I'd try writing something. Getting started is always the hardest part. This is how the process works.

My psoriasis has been playing up and it has weighed on my mind. On Thursday I joined a group of psoriasis sufferers as part of a research programme into the disease and diet. It was eye opening - so much suffering, so much effort expended trying all sorts of "cures" and my discomfort from the disease was negligible. I suspect that experience started off the train of thought which led me to where I got to today.

In the early 1960's I went to a school in Hove called Hove College. It was a small, not very classy, private educational establishment. The teachers were either previously retired or just starting and most were not that good. Except our English teacher Liz Cotterill. She was young and, to an impressionable teenager, incredibly attractive.  I don't remember much about her classes but this one thing. Somehow one class discussion came round to beauty and I think she said that the human skin was beautiful. I disagreed I said close up it was bumpy and ugly. I don't recall her reply but 60 years on I remember that discussion.

I was scraping around for something to latch onto, to kick start a poem  and that incident over half a century ago came to mind. I think it was my recent experience relating to my skin condition that sparked that recollection and so the poem's subject matter. I had intended the poem to a straight forward description of that distant event except as I started writing I quickly realised I didn't recall that much - only the short exchange about skin.  Which changed the way the poem fell out and it become an evocation of teenage infatuation.

Having written the poem and recalling her name I Googled her without success. Then I Googled "Hove College" and there appears to be quite a substantial archive - held at the East Sussex Records. I signed up thinking I could view the material on line - especially the School magazine for the years I was there. A school picture with Miss Cotterill! Unfortunately, before I can have a decko I have to turn up somewhere in Brighton with two pieces of identification.

While researching Miss Cotterill and reigniting my teenage lust, I came across an extensive site on Brighton and Hove. It's a great site with loads of stuff about people, places and events from the early 1900's to now. One category was schools in the area. I searched for Hove College, nothing and Hove Grammar, I went there to do my A levels - another blank. There was, however, entries for the Knoll Secondary Modern School which I attended  a year or so from 1959. And there was a school photograph.

There I am second in, in the second row, on the far left looking rather worried, and boys  I remember as well as teachers! One boy I recall had a huge penis and he'd show it to us and tell us about his antics with his cousin - or was it his aunt. There are Jim Gately and Geoff Stimpson - names and faces etched on me because they made my life hell. There also is the headmaster Mr Deller, who was fond of giving boys six of the best - he was later convicted of sex offences after a mother reported him to the police.

I'm pleased with how the poem worked out. I'll revisit it in the coming days but I think I'll read it at our next poetry get together this Thursday. Oh, and here's the photo...