I joined Blackwell at the age of 11 in 1959.  I had grown up in Harrow Weald and went to Cedars infants and then Junior School.  I was one of those many who failed the 11+ and in retrospective I think I know why: the staff at Cedars had already decided who was going to pass and who was not.

You may recall that the 11+ included an 'IQ’ paper.  Those who passed had all been coached on the exam.  I and most others had not.  So when I was presented with the IQ paper I had no idea what it meant.  So although I passed the other 11+ papers, I failed.  So I was consigned to Blackwell rather than Harrow County Grammar.

Blackwell had a streaming system.  So when we got there we all had to sit an exam, which ended up being divided up into 11 streams running from 1/1 to 1/11.  I was put in 1/1.  Olphin assembled those of us in 1/1, 1/2 and 1/3 and told us that, so far as he was concerned, we were grammar school material and that we would be given a grammar school education.  Those of us in 1/1 even did some Latin, though that did not last long.

So those of us in the upper streams all got our grammar school education until it came to the 4th year.  We then had to opt into either the academic stream (both sexes), the Engineering stream (boys only), the Commercial stream (girls only) or the general stream.  The general stream consisted of those who were mentally challenged and those whose home circumstances made any higher education impossible.  They all left at the end of the year, the leaving age then being 15.

So I was put in 4A/1 then 5A/1 - as I was going down the academic road.

In addition to this, there was a House system comprising Austen, Byron, Churchill, Dunant (the founder of the Red Cross), Elgar and Faraday.  Pupils would meet in their "House Groups" before we moved off to our various teaching classes.  We were all given a school diary in which to record all this.

The idea of 'Houses’ was, I think, Olphin’s.  Houses would compete against each other, particularly in sports.  Each, he thought, would help inculcate this "school spirit" that he was always on about.  Come to think of it, I think he was the only one who really believed in it.  You have to remember this was just a suburban largely working class school.  It was not Harrow (the place on the Hill) or Eton.

Mr Olphin was a very fine teacher.  He was years ahead of his time, which is why he was awarded the OBE.  I and many others owe him a great debt.  He often, but not all the time, wore his academic gown.  As a result he was often referred to as "Batman".  I think he wore it as a means of recognition - it was certainly not "moth-eaten".  Most of the teaching staff were the products of training colleges so they would not have any academic gowns to wear anyway.

After the 5th form came the 6th which was divided into upper and lower.  The lower comprised those starting A-levels, those re-sitting O-levels and others doing both.  Upper 6th pupils were those in the last year of their A-levels.

If you got five or more O-levels you were entitled to do your 6th form at the local Grammar School.  My friend, Ian Davies, and I went to see the headmaster of our local grammar school, Harrow County, about this.  The headmaster was Merlyn Rees.  He had already stood as an unsuccessful Labour parliamentary candidate in Harrow East.  Later on he was given a safe a Labour seat in Leeds and became a Labour MP.  In the Wilson government, he got the thankless job of Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and later was rewarded by being made Home Secretary.  I believe he died in 1988.

Ian decided to move to Harrow County.  I did not because Rees would only offer me two A-levels.  I think this was much to the relief of Olphin.

I should mention that my friend, Ian, emigrated to Australia just after he left school.  He became a professional musician.  I am still in contact with him.  Last year he came to visit me in Dorset and we spent a few days together.  He is also still in contact with Bob Stewart (our music teacher) who is in his late 80s (in 2020).

The upper 6th in 1964/5 comprised four girls, the Lynch twins and myself.  So Olphin had really no choice but to make me Headboy.  I may not have been ideal but I fitted the part.  The Lynchs would probably not have taken the job if it was offered.  The Lynchs were rarely there, so the girls treated me royally.  On more than one occasion, Olphin dressed down the twins in my presence, much to my discomfort.  This was about their lack of "school spirit" and their failure to enter into the life of the school.  We discussed it afterwards and I told them frankly that I thought they were entirely within their rights and that they had my complete sympathy.

As we were such a small Upper Sixth in 1965/6 it meant we got the best teaching staff available.  I believe our English teacher (who was Canadian) was a Ph.D.  I also did British Constitution and much of the teaching was done by Olphin himself.

As Upper 6th, we managed to commandeer one of the dressing rooms attached to the Great Hall.  It was our private Upper 6th room.  The Head Girl smoked.  So I used to give her the cigarettes that I had confiscated that day.  She never had to buy any.  It was a habit I never acquired myself and I don’t think anyone else in the Upper Sixth smoked.

Smoking was widespread throughout the school population - as it was in the rest of the population.  But there was a complete ban on this at Blackwell (and at Chandos and Downer - C.P.) and Olphin was very keen that this was enforced.  As well as being Headboy, I was also the chief prefect (there being no one else available).  So at lunch times I used to take squads of prefects to the places round about the school where boys could be found smoking.

It was always boys as I recall.  When I caught them, I would relieve them of their goods, take their names and report them to Olphin.  He never asked me to give him the contraband as he knew I did not smoke.  So when I next saw Kate (the Head Girl), I just handed them over, and that was that.

I had no idea, in my last year, what I wanted to do.  The idea of going to university did not enter my head and I did not want to go to Teachers Training College as a lot of people from Blackwell did.  You only needed 5 O-levels to get in then as I recall.  So I saw this advert for HM Customs & Excise, HM C&E, in the Evening News, took the entrance exam and got in.  It seems the only exam I ever failed was the 11+.  I got my three A-levels and I believe I was only the second Blackwell pupil ever to do so.  Not bad for an 11+ failure.  The exam results did not come out until September by which time I was in HM C&E based in Liverpool.  Olphin went to great efforts to contact me to get me to apply for university.  This is commonplace today, but it was a very rare event then.  In those days there were no university fees to pay and you could get a subsistence grant from your local authority.  Even so I decided against this.  I was being well paid.  I became an external student of London University and started studying in my own time.

I left Blackwell in July 1966.  I had a weeks holiday in Cornwall and then I spent a week at the Harrow Excise Office at Bradstowe House which was near Harrow on the Hill station.  The original building is gone but there is an office block there now with that name.

I was then posted to Carby House in Southend which was then the C&E training centre.  A few yards down the road was Alexander House the C&E headquarters building which later became the VAT Central Unit.

In addition, HM C&E kindly paid for all my books, exam fees and gave me study and exam leave.  It took me five years of evenings and weekends but it was worth it.

In 1968 I got a move back to the "London West" Collection as it was called.  This covered part of Central London, Harrow, Wembley and all the surrounding areas.

The active wings of C&E were divided into the Waterguard (the ones most people are familiar with, who wear uniforms and ask "Have you Anything to Declare").  However there were a much greater number of us of higher rank known as the "Outdoor Service" who were in plain clothes.  We were responsible for the collection of all the indirect taxes, such as commercial Customs & Excise duties at ports, airports, distilleries etc.  We were also responsible for the administration of Purchase Tax (the predecessor to VAT).  One of my jobs was to examine laboratory stills to make sure they were not distilling alcohol.  I did one such visit at Blackwell - much to the amusement of Mr Olphin.

A few years later, I decided to do an MA in American Politics and history on similar terms to those with C&E previously.

When I retired in 2004, I intended to do a Ph.D.  But I decided I had nothing more to prove so I left it.  I have been working (mostly unpaid) as a Mental Health Recovery worker to this day.