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The arrival of Mr. & Mrs. Reader in 1952
by David Siddle - Reprinted from the Beckside

As yet there has been no revolution. The Ezekialic prophets of the form rooms, men of wide experience and renown, were, at the end of last term predicting from worn pulpits a gigantic Aytonian eruption of major social importance. They were wrong. Mr. Carr left Ayton for the comparative quiet and peace of the Lake District. Mr. Reader came to us from the industrialized Black Country. The change over has been smooth and so far life proceeds on much the same course.

Mr. Reader is, as he says, "a Southerner who has lived most of his life in the North." He comes, as did Mr. Carr, from farming stock and was educated at the Friends' School, Saffron Walden, talking his B.A. degree at Dalton Hall, a Quaker hall at Manchester University. He came to Ayton, his first appointment from college, in 1938, specialising in Scripture. He remained here throughout the war, where he met and married Mrs. Reader, who was then Miss Hodge. Mrs. Reader came to Ayton first in 1941, from Homerton College, Cambridge, where she took a two year course with Advanced Art. She taught Art throughout the School and was the form mistress of Junior B - the now extinct class for the eight and nine year olds. Miss Hodge married Mr. Reader in the summer of 1945, and for the rest of their time on the Staff at Ayton they lived in a " flat" at the top of Rawdon House, in the rooms now occupied by Mr. Porter and Mr. Grosvenor. They moved, in 1946, to Hove, where Mr. Reader became Scripture Specialist at Hove Grammar School, and Mrs. Reader became a housewife and later a mother. Later they moved to Dudley where Mr. Reader was appointed Lecturer in Social Studies at Dudley Training College for Teachers, and from there he came to Ayton.

The Readers, as may be imagined are both artistically minded. This can be seen from their bookshelves which enclose books on philosophy, theology, literary classics, poetry and art. Mr. Reader has made much of the furniture in the house himself and it has favourably withstood the critical eyes of some of the senior boys. As may be remembered by many Old Scholars, Mr. Reader is a keen sportsman and although he has seldom appeared on the football field this term owing to his overburdening responsibilities as headmaster and parent, his interest in the cricket square augurs well for the approaching season.

One could not, and must not, pass over this introduction without mentioning the three offspring, who cause Mr. Reader "more trouble than all the other two hundred and ten put together."

Jonathon is now six and very proud that he is grown up enough to go to school. He is vivacious and boisterous to an embarrassing degree, and divides his time equally between catching current infectious diseases common to all children, piratical excursions with murder as his intent and a penknife as his weapon, and screaming along the playground at eighty m.p.h. on a tricycle.-a. dirt track protégé.

Nigel has the heavy, blue-eyed sagacity of three years. He has already discovered the fact that he can embarrass the teacher and amuse the class by calling a cheery greeting through an open class-room window, and he has captured the hearts, not only of the senior girls, but even the Sixth form and the first form boys whose heathen hearts he has taken by storm. He even has Dusty Binns pretending he is a train!

Hilary's age is still accounted for in months, and he has not yet acquired a sufficient knowledge of the English language to give any impression of his character. He is still busy learning Newton's law of gravity as illustrated not by the historical apple from a tree but by Dinky cars and Teddy Bears from a pram. He has an analytic eye which seems to look with mixed feelings of disgust and amazement on any attempt to communicate with him by sign and baby language, and he treats most of his male admirers with an amused indifference, being like most men, more partial to female attention.

The Summer Term brings with it fresh responsibilities for a new headmaster, and the school looks forward to next term, not with a question mark like the beginning of this term, but with assurance that Mr. Reader will further the confidence which he has inspired this term, a term which must have been very difficult, but a term which he has completed successfully. I think I could best end with the words of the Second Former who remains anonymous, who remarked: " He is the same as Mr. Carr but different, isn't he ? I think I am going to like him."

David Siddle (17 years).

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