A Big Influence.. the biggest maybe.

Well over at Lucky Snapping I suggested we share some things we may not know about each other.. so far I have talked about where I was born and that as a family we all vary in our degrees of being 'Morning People'

Now for my Big Influence!  This man here.. Malcolm Dewar...( I got the screen shot from Friends Reunited , amazing someone snapped him just walking up to 'new Block' where he spent most of his days in .. Room 15  think!)

He was a teacher at my secondary school and took my form for geography in the first year (now called Year 7); he was dead scarey to us and story has it we were the first and last first years he took, then he settled down to take O level groups and be form teacher to the fifteen year olds.. the girls who had gotten used to school and could handle a curmudgeonly geography teacher as they edged towards full on puberty!  .

I was lucky enough to be in the fifth form he took during my year, 5 Dewar. We all kind of dreaded being the form which got him but once you were there you got to know him better and realised he was actually very real and such a cool guy, he didn't run with the stress as most of the 'lady' teachers did and you knew where you stood. He had five children, walked to school every day, had a huge collection of ties and kept a few pages ahead of us (not that I knew that til afterwards!) He wrote very small, never got the glasses he so obviously needed and had his hair cut once a year. Only the girls who did his subject really felt at ease with him, so optional Current Affairs which he also took meant a few hours to get him telling us all the non-geography stuff he knew.. stories of the police, Freemasons and corruption were my favourites!

I had to stay on into Sixth Form as I wasn't quite 16 at the end of the year and met him while in town after the O level results came out. We chatted about the next step and he told me I should start A levels even if I didn't really want to.. so I did.. I took A's with him.. Geography and then Geology and Sociology (just when that subject became a real option, but only just, he was teaching it at evening class, but school let him supplement it and even entered us for the exams for free)

Then there was the A-level field trips.. the first to the Lizard, discoveries of pebbles in a field way up above sea level and studies of the unique metamorphic  serpentine on the Lizard.. it would have been an earthquake Zone once you know!
Yes, it all sunk in and much of it stayed there. I was in awe..I even believed him the day he began talking about treacle mines, well it all sounded so plausible after discussions about magma and hot lava, treacle is sugary sticky stuff too isn't it and why shouldn't you mine it.. must have been April 1st and Kathi on gullible mode as ever!

Next there was the S Wales trip..the less said about that the better, I can't imagine why he put himself through it, especially arriving with a party of girls at Cardiff Uni halls of residence, just as the Coal Board boys were having their last night party ... we drank way too much and looking back we must have been real liabilities but he was still cool, making us cringe when we spoke the morning afters about whether or not we had been sensible!! 
But still we learnt and grew.. U shaped valleys, mature rivers and town planning in Cardiff.

I guess I should have gone on to do geography but I wasn't sure what I'd end up doing with it.. the decisions after A levels were much less stressful than our kids have today. My folks had not had a long education, you didn't back in 1940's unless you were dead smart and / or rich, so when my time to make decisions came they didn't have the experience to draw on. 
Mr Dewar would wander into Thursday form period, the UCCA book under his arm, the bible of all Uni courses..and there they were, the Social Admin courses, not quite pure Sociology, not too focused on just work, a good compromise for an argumentative 17 year old who liked a debate and soaked up information like a sponge (that was me, in case you are asleep or lost!) 
He talked to us all about courses to suit, most of the kids still listening to him at this point were those who knew him best, the dozen or so girls doing his subjects..we ended up doing everything from Art at teacher training to Mining Geology .. my choices were going to be at Canterbury (sounded posh and nice but soooo far away in my mind) or Exeter.
I pondered many times, he always quietly hung out for me to go, never pressurising but gently leaving that book about and the information settled in my head..

I didn't apply the last year as most did, I had delusions of a marriage and working in a bank but decent A levels results (all thanks to him, taking us step by step through many an essay and giving us that perk up at the end, an almost A grade essay the month before the exams, the perfect incentive to work a bit harder..).. and the resurgence of an old flame who snuffed out the current beau..made me try and get to Uni through clearing.. alas I needed a language O level that year, but hey, come to us the next.. so there it was, he had succeeded, I was off to Uni after all.

A year into my course in Exeter I went back to see him, the school was now a Sixth Form college, he and one of his pals he had mentored were bunked up in an outrigger Humanities building and rarely set foot in the progressive main building, he was contented to work his last few years playing the system, reading the Times every day and staying those few pages ahead on the Curriculum. I amazed myself by realising he didn't know everything, I had learnt about new things he hadn't heard of and I was kind of sad, but it was a big lesson. He invited me to go teach a couple of hours for him about Unemployment and it was great, maybe I should have taught after all (I do love my red pen even now!)

Sadly not too many years later, perhaps when I was about 28 he collapsed and died at school. His friend said at his funeral that  a few months before he had taken himself off when on a field trip to London to go search out the East End haunts of his youth (oh yes, he was an expert on Jack the Ripper), as if knowing he would not be going back again. He was that kind of person, did his own thing, pleased himself, unconventional but gave everyone the opportunity to learn and share his knowlegde, but in a quiet way, he was the kind of person in your past you think would always be there, larger than life, or to be fair, larger than death. 

Shame, but a big thank you.. I would probably have not had many of the thoughts or experiences I had as a young adult without his influence.. and my kids will tell you even know.. Mum loves Geography!