Still gazing from windows……Patrick Bearchell 1959 to 1965
St Mary’s here we come: This great picture shows 1959 joiner Patrick Bearchell in his new school uniform, aged 11, with his mum.
Here, in his own words, Patrick Bearchell reflects on St Mary’s life and what happened subsequently:
“The Jesuits, no doubt in a moment of hyperbole, stated that given the child, they would give the world the man at seven years of age, while the Marists, a shade more realistically, strove to give the world the man at sixteen, a task in my case of epic optimism as for most of my six years at St Mary's I gazed out of the classroom window and thought of girls.
“I say most, because I had been at St Mary's for a year before Bob Carter explained the mechanics of reproduction to me in the Art room one day and clarified many things that a master at the school had attempted to convey to us several years later in an excruciatingly embarrassing effort to teach ‘O’ level sex to a class most of who by that time had a PhD in the subject.
“Another formative event, that this time gave me a lifelong aversion to gambling, was the 1956 Grand National when, at the tender age of eight, I had a week's pocket money on Devon Loch in a family sweepstake, and having successfully jumped the final fence, 40 yards from the finishing line and five lengths ahead, the bloody horse fell over. The effect on a young child's mind of great riches snatched away so capriciously I'm sure you think you can imagine, but let me tell you frankly, you can't.
Devon Loch’s dramatic fall in the 1956 Grand National which left young Patrick distraught
“My descent into the world of drugs was similarly disappointing as a soccer match between St Mary's and some other school assumed an excessive significance in my mind and John Preston and I turned to drugs to enhance our performance. I obtained a purple heart tablet which we broke in half and shared, but nevertheless lost the match, leaving me with the impression that drugs were overrated.
“However - some years later, at the age of twenty four I decided to give up my habit of thirty cigarettes a day. This experience though salutary, was the nightmare of my life. For five years I wrestled with the craving until I was free of that demon, and the episode made me realise how ghastly it must be to escape the lust for hard drugs. Better never to enter that Hell than to attempt escape.
“I left St Mary's the proud owner of a certificate listing the five "O" levels I had obtained, the product of five years of indolence and three months of intensive cramming during which I paid restitution for my inattention, and every year being one of the bottom three in my class in the end of year exams.
Patrick snowboarding in Sierra Nevada
“After failing to conquer the worlds of Banking and Accountancy I finally found my calling in computer programming in which I immersed myself for twenty years in the UK, US, and Canada before feeling the call of........ well something different.
“I have always been interested in finance and so I decided to try Financial Advising which found me on a sales course with Allied Dunbar, known in the trade as Allied Crowbar because of their sales technique. The sales training was actually pretty good but the work could be dire at times as it involved contact with many people who were in financial difficulties. Dealing with people who were desperate for money was not a fun occupation and to see the despair in their eyes and smell the fear in the room as they tried to make their hopeless cases for funds was depressing.
“So I decided to try something different and started what turned out to be a wonderful business.
“When books are first published, copies are sent to reviewers in the hope of a favourable review in a newspaper, which can substantially improve sales. These reviewers usually work from home and consequently rapidly acquire a stock of books in their spare room which I would buy from them and then sell to public and academic libraries.
For twenty years I travelled around the home counties buying and selling from and to the most agreeable bunch of people you could hope to meet, honest, intelligent and for many, with a touching love of literature. It paid well too, sufficiently well for me to only work three days a week, which left four days for gazing out of the window thinking of girls; just like being at school but without the homework or discipline.
“I was never inclined towards the team sports played at St Mary's perhaps because I am an only child and by nature a loner, and as an adult preferred less gregarious sports such as tennis, skiing, snowboarding and skydiving.
“When I was twenty one, I married a girl I met in a hearse. You see, I owe my first wife to George Hazelwood as I met her at his funeral, and I owe my second wife to ............... well, my first wife.
“Wives, I've found are lovely, but they can be tricky. When for example they ask you why you are gazing out of the window, you have to quickly think of something uncontroversial.
“I have three children and the eldest will be fifty this year which I find incredible as I was forty only yesterday. I have six grandchildren.
Patrick eschews team sports for more solo pursuits like skydiving
“I look back on my time at St Mary's with mixed feelings and my most vivid memories are of the discipline, of which I experienced little but witnessed much, and has usually been considered excessive by the old boys I've met. But life can be tough and so perhaps the passage from child to adult should not be devoid of a degree of regulation inevitably found more uncomfortable by those inclined to challenge authority than those who dealt with it by accommodation or even circumvention, which I suppose is how we all learned to survive and prosper, or not, in the world for which we were nurtured.
“I'm now, in 2022, 74 years old, living in Dorset with my lovely wife in blissful retirement, indulging in my hobbies, and of course, gazing out of the window. Plus ça change.....
Christmas in Dorset.