Beaconsfield Boarding School

But the headmaster one half term, disappeared with all the school funds and the school closed - never to reopen! The students had come from all over the UK as there were very few Jewish boarding schools and we only knew each other by our first names, so I lost contact with all those that were not from Birmingham.

My dear parents desperately had to find another school at short notice and the only one I could go to was Greenmore College, a day school, very mixed, but there was hardly anyone else that was Jewish there. This school no longer exists, but I was aware of some particularly nasty bullies there (two later ended up in prison). However, this was where I met my best friend Bob, who lived within a few minutes' walk from my home in Knightlow Road. After the exams at sixteen I was so glad to get away.


Robert Herrick (Bob)

We used to spend a lot of our free time together and we played tennis and snooker quite often. We could make a short cut to each other's homes from our back gardens because we only had a field between us.

Bob and I decided to go camping once, in the Summer holidays the idea was to have a week together to help each other revise for the GSE exams, we went to Alveston and we found an empty field, sloping down to a river, not too far away from our homes (near Stratford upon Avon), having obtained permission from the local farmer we decided to camp there.

We found a level place a little further up from the river and pitched our tent, we had some food with us, and we had borrowed an army dinghy and our plan was to try fishing for our evening meals.

Having spent the late afternoon and evening looking around the area, once it was dark, we made a campfire, cooked something to eat (our attempts at fishing were not successful) and later got into our sleeping bags (the tent was just large enough for 2).

We fell asleep, but in the early hours about 5 or 6 am, we heard some strange noises, and our tent was moving, we got up and had a look outside and found ourselves completely surrounded by inquisitive cows, a couple of them were using our supporting cables to scratch themselves and the next moment the tent toppled over!

That morning we went and bought some poles, barbed wire, and made a fence surrounding our camping area, but this also failed to deter the cows too, every day a section was demolished! My Mum and Dad came to find us after a few days and brought us a particularly good picnic, they were curious to know how we were getting on.