| Description | An interview with Michael RICHARDSON, a married man with one son, one daughter, who is a Painter/writer, born in Birmingham and now living in Birmingham. Michael RICHARDSON’s father was a Motor fitter, born in England and his mother a Housewife born in England. In the interview, he talks about …
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I was born in 1933 in Northfield…
28” Mother from a poor background.
56” My father I don’t know much about, he dies when I was about 9, that was 1943.
1.41” Mother was a strict Catholic. The War confirmed her conviction that they were living in the ‘last days.’
2.40” Unusual experience of being an English Catholic before the immigration of Irish people.
4.09” …I felt…certainly not to the extent of an immigrant fom another country, but…just that little bit of being just outside the rest of the population….
4.33” Story about his mother walking to church in the snow, so great was her fear of commiting a sin by not attending church.
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Refused to serve on the altar.
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3” Lived in a council house in Rubery.
17” …this was… 1932, ’33. I lived in that house for… nearly 28 years.
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13” Council houses were well designed. Differences between private and council houses.
1.38” My sister was born in… 1934.
1.44” Mother’s middle class aspirations.
2.29” The I went to … Moseley School of Art… in 1946.
3.37” I think it was a very good experience and it gave me the opportunity to go to Art College, which I did in… about 1950.
3.49” Affected by the 1944 Education Act, making secondary education free for all. Got a grant for Art College.
4.36” Going to Art College. Formerly for people of a higher social class, people spoke differently to him.
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Attempts of lower class students to imitate the ‘posher’ accent.
29” …I was impressed by the way people spoke when I went to Art College, but sometimes years later discovered that they came from equally deprived backgrounds...
Because the 60s put paid to all that… It didn't matter where you came from, it didn't matter what sort of regional accent you had, but in the 50s it still counted… in terms of job prospects and being accepted.
3” I went to what was really an all age school in 1938 when I was 5…
16” Started building a new school 2 years later.
33” …a year after I’d started school… the war started… so my education was interrupted just like everybody else’s was.
51” School taken over as an ARP post, went to a teacher's house and were taught there in the mornings until the new school was sufficiently finished.
1.34” War began to bite by then because a lot of teachers…were called up…
1.43” Influx of retired teachers.
1.53” So school was a very scratchy affair.
2.51” The war touvched everything actually at school… practically 90% of your conversation was about the war or about some restriction that the war had imposed.
3.07” Ration books and ‘personal points.’
3.44” Saw wounded soldiers.
4.40” Moved to the Junior section of the school in about 1943.
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His generation’s education was badly affected by the war.
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Some of his friends were evacuated. Motorworks a target, although never hit.
2.00” There were London evacuees in their area towards the end of the war.
2.52” Getting into Art College, entrance exam.
4.34” Lucky to be educated after the 1944 Education Act.
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Concludes on education.
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I went to Moseley School of Art in 1946.
21” Memories of the school, unusual to be leaving school at 16 rather than 14.
2.03” School was created to encourage the Arts in Birmingham.
3.20” It got to the point… this would be about 1949… we would excuse ourselves from practically everything… we spent the whole year making props and painting stage scenery… and nobody noticed… we didn’t do Maths, English, Geography, History, no general subjects at all…
3.55” So from the age of 15 I had no… general education at allL… there weren't any leaving qualifications at all...
Story about final exam, and when he and his friend didn’t turn up for it, the teachers didn’t notice because they’d been out of classes painting scenery for so long!
4.37” Option to go on to the Art College.
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Re-start, background interference.
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Dead Track.
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8” …the 1944 Education Act…was being implemented after the war when I was at school, so in 1949 when I left school…
19” Education system at the time; Secondary Modern Schools (leaving age 15), Grammar schools (leaving age 16 or 18).
41” Didn’t have any proper qualifications when he finished, so did an extra year to sit 5 ‘O’ levels.
2.21” So the following year ’51 saw me at Birmingham College of Art…
2.27” ‘Finishing school’ for upper middle class girls. Jeans had just come in. Art student ‘uniforms.’
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28” Arts Balls, tried to be as outrageous as possible. (Stripping at Balls, girls walking about in their underwear.)
1.15” Story about parties, waking up in Moseley at 5am dressed up in a grass skirt having to get home.
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3” …this must have been about 1953, ’54…
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…1954, I must have been 21 at that time…
10” Gained a first class honours degree.
35” I left …the Birmingham Art College in 1954… got a job in Lewis’s Dept Store.
51” Deciding what to do next, worked in a market garden.
2.16” …I suppose it's recognised now…I suppose I was a mixed up and twisted youth, although I don't think think the term had been coined at that time… but that's what I was, without direction, with a sense that sooner or later, I'd got to do something…
2.56” Did a teaching qualification at Bournemouth College of Art.
3.11” … and so… about 1956 I went down to Bournemouth …
3.32” I finished my course in the July of 1958…
3.39” Went back to work at Lewis’s.
4.04” Worked at Handsworth Wood Boys School for 8 years.
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10” …already, this is 1958 when Secondary Moderns had been going for 10 or 11 years by then…
38” Uniforms established, started doing ‘O’levels in the school. Designed the school crest.
2.38” Secondary Moderns following in the pattern of the Grammar Schools.
3.10” Liked his job.
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I was at Handsworth Wood Boys School from 1958 to 1966.
21” Moved to Blessed Humphrey Middlemore School in 1966, the first purpose-built Catholic School in the authority.
37” …and that was 1966.
1.05” …I'm very pleased I made the switch because comprehensive schools in the middle 60s were qualitively different from secondary moderns, ..they were supposed to be pretty comparable…offering the same sort of thing, but the sheer size of the comprehensive schools ensured that the education was much wider, the facilities were much greater…there was provision for people to take "A" Levels… which wasn't true at the time in secondary moderns.
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…September 1966 then, I started my second job at …Blessed Humphrey Middlemore Comprehensive School which was in… Harborne.
21” Designing the School crest. First purpose-built comprehensive school in Birmingham.
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1966 I started at my new school…the first purpose-built Catholic Comprehensive School in Birmingham.
16” Designing the school crest. History of Humphrey Middlemore. A lot of the staff were Irish.
2.08” Ethos of the school was ‘special.’
2.52” …but the school sadly had a very limited life. It closed in 1982, and this was because I think society had changed, the culture had changed. Early on in the 1960s Catholic parents were still anxious to send their children to a Catholic School and I think this began to change…this need to send children to Catholic Schools started to wane…and numbers …started diminishing…and in the early ‘80s things were pretty desperate…ultimately the school was sold and it’s now become a housing estate. A very brave idea that just didn’t come to pass.
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25” Effect of the Birmingham Pub bombings on the largely Irish school population. The school received nasty, racist phone calls about Irish people. Pupils felt threatened.
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2” I was at Blessed Humphrey Middlemore School from 1966 to 1982. The following year in fact, it was knocked down and became a housing estate.
15” Vast school in comparison to others, less communal feel.
1.20” …when I started Humphrey Middlemore School in ’66, I think there was a general feeling of confidence in the air. I think there was generally… in the country and it was a brave new experiment…
1.42” Progressive parents preferred to send their children to non-selective education.
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More democratic system, although still streamed, there were efforts to mix them too.
School was ‘in the middle of nowhere.’
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2” …1982, the school was obviously going to be closed, there was no chance of reprieve…
8” Efforts to keep the school open.
45” Got a job at Lordswood Girls School.
1.05” …I got out before the school actually closed...the school closed in ’83 but I started Lordswood Girls School in 1982… I only spent 6 years there, 1982 to 1988, the last part of my teaching career I think I enjoyed this phase more than any other time, it’s a delightful school, there simply weren’t any problems of discipline…
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8” The ‘earnestness’ of teachers. A story about playing a trick on the staff by putting up a notice claiming that teachers were taking advantage of an official day off to do their Christmas shopping but they weren’t shopping, they were doing other things. Got told off for that.
2.36” Story about another trick he played on the staff about changing the English marking system to get it in line with Europe. Got into trouble again.
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1.01”I began to think…that perhaps humour ought to be in the curriculum, it certainly aided my teaching…
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2” …at age 55 in 1988, Birmingham was offering a very attractive package for people that wanted to retire prematurely and …I decided to take it… and I left teaching then in 1988, with the desire to paint, that was the thing that prompted me really…
1.07” …teaching by the ‘80’s… occupies literally all of your free time…
1.37” …anyway, 1988 I started painting in earnest…now I could spend all my time doing it, which I did…
1.56” His painting career went from strength to strength.
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14” …about ’94, I was having difficulties in seeing, which is not really a very good thing for an artist. I’d always suffered from very bad eyesight… I developed cataracts…
35” Managing painting with cataracts. Story about having an operation and seeing better than when he’d been a child.
2.09” Started writing, thinking that his painting career might be coming to an end.
2.37” …this was 1994, six years ago. My wife suggested that I wrote a novel.
2.46” Working on his first novel. Took three years.
3.27” …about ’96, ’97… I had the cataract operation, so I was able to see, so I carried on with both things, I carried on with the writing, I carried on with the painting…
3.54” 1994… I finished my… novel and then started the business of selling it to agents and publishers…
4.20” Experience of selling his novel.
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Eventually sold it to Tindal Street Press.
38” …some months later, it must have been about June or July of ’99 they said that my story had been accepted and it was going to be published.
1.16” Plans to write another novel.
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Started writing poetry and has had them published.
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Fan of Just William stories and Enid Blyton’s middle class world, Arthur Ransome. Memories of going as a child in the library. Favourite authors then and now.
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4” I met my wife at school, the first job I had, this is 1959…
46” …It was a mixed marriage, dreadful term… For me, being a Catholic, marrying a non-Catholic caused all sorts of problems.
1.02” Had to marry in a Registry Office, disapproved of. Spoke to the Irish priest, had to promise the children would be baptised into the Catholic church, etc. Story about talking about the ‘consumation’ of marriage with the priest.
4.34” …You were a Catholic, so you went through the motions of doing what a Catholic was supposed to do. I think if I had been a few years later, none of this would have happened, 'cos society radically changed.
4.46” However, children in fact were allowed to believe what they liked in the end.
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2” …Really I suppose I broke a promise, apart from having them baptised as Catholics...
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6” His enormous fear instilled by Catholicism. Story about struggling to deal with masturbation and confession.
3.33” His attitude now to Catholicism; has a ‘sneaking’ respect for Catholicism, although sees himself as a ‘questioning Catholic.’ Closest he comes to religion is Buddhism, because it’s not dogmatic.
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41” His children’s feeling about religion. Have a lot of respect for religion.
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14” Probably the first vehicle I travelled on was a… double decker tram…the main means of transport in most cities at that time, 1930’S, 1940’S,into the ‘50’S.
50” Description of two different varieties of trams.
1.50” Memories of trolley buses. Speaks of the swishing sound they made.
2.32” Few cars; only remembers two cars parked in his entire road.
3.08” …I must have been about 5 or 6… my father had borrowed a car, it must have been about 1939, just before the war… he took me and my sister to the Lickey Hills…
3.44” Neighbour had a very old car, occasionally gave them lifts to church.
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5” Shops now are all the same no matter where you go. Birmingham used to have it’s own distinct flavour, ‘cities have become so predictable.’
1.36” Old style pubs have all gone now. Talks about the Prince of Wales being converted into a ‘Heritage Pub’ with inappropriate interior decoration. A ‘manufactured pub done by some company who’s never been to Birmingham.’
3.14” Things have become homogenised, there's a general levelling of everything, the way people dress…in the shops…there's a Coca-cola everywhere…The world is becoming a much less interesting place in some respects. Wehave the access to go to these other places, but they more and more resemble the place you've just come from. |