Mrs S

In those days you had an 'Grammer Skool' entry exam at age 11, called the 11plus. My birthday being in October meant I had an extra year in Class 6 at Chinnor with Mrs Sheedy so I got left behind (booo) because I was still 10.. all very confusing at the time and since probably. Mrs Sheedy was married to a stained glass artist and brought a big box of scraps for us to make a big Jesus picture, to my design (beaming smile). We traced on to a large framed piece of picture glass which lived on the side we worked on at the end of the day if we were good... with Aruldite!
What happened to the big Jesus picture?
Well, Mrs S was away for a few days and we had Mrs Middleton to fill in, and when she asked for a window to be opened, Tony Fujak jumped up like Biggles would have done and put his foot on the yet to be finished masterpiece. Ohhhh my, all that work gone for a burton.
Mrs S took against 'Fujak' from then on.
He was a techy sort of chap and when we first moved to Chinnor when I was nine had already rigged up a private phone line with the people the other side across Oakley Road using scrap telephone receiver parts and bell wire. His Polish Dad was a bit scary with the belt but there were quite a few of his compatriots at the Cement Works. Switowski, Zakachevski, Petrovski to name but a few.
Great Missenden had an entire estate which was still Polish speaking in the 70's including a grocery shop full of sauerkraut and würst and my drum teacher 'Stan' Pearson also Polish got me a gig at the Hilton hotel with a polka and waltzes band from there.
I really thought I was on the brink of stardom being one hand shake away from the Czar of Russia. The ancient violin player who looked quite a lot like Bob Hope had been a child prodigy summoned to perform at court.. imagine!