Who says boarding schools are bad...?

In other news my ex-English teacher at secondary school has been in the dock again.  It seemed before he came to our school he spent a lot of time in Catholic boarding schools giving the boarders singing lessons and tucking children in at night with a bit too much enthusiasm.  He was put away for 10 years in 2015 for abusing 10 boys aged under 14 between 1978 and 1984.  In total 15 counts of indecent assault but since then more people have come out of the shadows to accuse him.  He pled guilty and got 2 more years this time - to add on to his 10.

I know it's a cliche but I did think it was a bit odd that he very often had a box of sweets.

One day Mr Lowe took us on a school trip to the Fairfield Halls.  On the way we stopped at his house … which I thought was unusual but sort of not that odd …maybe he wanted to pick something up... but how many teachers take part of the class round their house even if it is local to where they’re going?  He lived in a small terrace house in Croydon not far from the venue with his wife and five children.

I can’t remember how many of us there were but it was a nice summer evening and I remember thinking that the house was very small for seven people - let alone 7 people and half the class .  I also remember his daughter who was a toddler waving at us from an upstairs window.   We waved back.  She waved back.  We waved back.  She waved back.  And then she disappeared and shortly afterwards there was a comedy thudding sound and shortly after that Mr Lowe reappeared from the house to say simply “she fell off the trunk”.

Mr Lowe then drove us on to the Fairfield Halls where as I remember we watched a production of Stephen Sondheim’s musical of Sweeney Todd before it was made fashionable by Johnny Depp …or it could have been something else.  Long time ago.

But why on earth did we stop at his house and go into it at all?  The same reason he invited kids at his previous school to his wedding?  It's probably nothing but...

With hindsight one wonders what was really going on... Shortly after this he threw me out his class for doing no work whatsoever ... but I suspect probably I was just too old for him.