George VI and school days.

King George VI

There was a kid in my class at school called Raymond Simmons, and one day he took the day off. He wasn't playing truant – playing the wag, we called it – as playing the wag is when your parents send you to school but you don't go – you do something else.

I only ever did that once – I went around to Alan Chance's house and we smoked cigarettes and played rock 'n' roll records. Proper rock 'n' roll records by Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis - maybe even Larry Williams.

On the day that Raymond Simmons played the wag, I asked if I could go to the lavatory and, when I went into the playground on my way to the boys lavatories, I saw him; he was putting a stick down a drain and wiggling it about.

I asked him what he was doing out there and he told me that he wasn't at school that day and not to tell the teacher that I'd seen him. His mother had kept him away, pretending he was ill; I went off for my pee and when I returned he was sitting on the steps.

'The King is dead” he said as a matter of fact.

“How do you know?”

“My mom told me; it was on the wireless.”

I went back into the classroom with this heavy piece of knowledge resting in my head. If I told the teacher she would have asked how I knew and I would have had to say that Raymond Simmons told me and then he would be in trouble; or his mother would be so I stayed quiet.

I knew that Princess Elizabeth would now be Queen and I salivated in this cognition knowing that for the time being I knew something important that nobody else in the class room did.

I was comfortable with my secret knowing full well that it was big news which would burst forth into general knowledge fairly soon and then into history.

I would have thought that someone, maybe the headmistress, would have come in and tell our teacher, but no; not a word was mentioned.

When we broke up and went out to lunch I told one or two of the other kids and Carol Ecclestone said “that means Princess Elizabeth will be Queen.”

“No she won't” said another “Princess Margaret will be.”

That was 60 years ago today; and it seems like – 60 years ago!!!!

That was the end of King George VI, who was in the news all last year as he was the subject of the film The King's Speech. His first name wasn't George at all. He was named after his grandfather, Prince Albert who was Queen Victoria's husband and known as Bertie, which is short for Albert.

However Prince Albert was German, and as Bertie came to the throne in 1936 when relations with Germany were at their lowest, he chose his second name to use as his title.

His birthday was on December 14^th – the same day as mine. They would commemorate it on the radio (the wireless in those days) every year and I think they would sing or play 'happy birthday' - and I would think it was for me.

I wasn't there for the first few birthdays, and in any case at that age, I wouldn't have heard it as I was a baby, but 1951 was the last time they played 'happy birthday' on my birthday; these days my children call and sing it to me.

Thought you'd like to know all that!