I have just learned of the untimely death of Mike Beal from cancer. Apparently, he died two or three years ago. He must have been no more than 65. Here are my memories of him.
Mike joined the staff of Old Swinford Hospital in 1976 to teach Science. His predecessor in the Science Department was Bob Boutland. It was my second year at OSH, and L.W. Sheppard to the end of his long reign. Mike was a boarding master with whom I shared duties in Founders Building. He lived in Foster, where Peter Davies held sway, and used to walk over to Founders to do his duties. Later he inhabited the flat in Founders, before moving to Maybury, where he became Housemaster in 1987. Like me, he was young and in his first teaching job. Like me, it took Mike a while to find his feet and get a grip on the often unruly boys.
Unlike me, who stayed for 10 years, 7 of them in boarding (‘boardingdom I used to call it), Mike stayed at OSH for his entire teaching career, as a boarding master from start to finish. I have written elsewhere about how
glad I am to have escaped from OSH, which had a habit of wrapping its tentacles around many a teacher and not letting go. Ray Milner and Peter Davies spring to mind in this respect. However, horses for courses: I had the wanderlust and wanted to live overseas, whereas Mike was obviously happy to stay put at OSH.
Mike and I were poles apart in terms of interests, except for two things: rugby and folk music. I didnt play rugby but followed the international game. I remember being mad at Mike at one of the staff quizzes for not letting me answer a rugby question when he knew only half the answer. The question was: who had captained and who had coached the British Lions in South Africa in 1974? Mike knew the answer to the first part, because Willie John McBride was one of his heroes; however, he did not know that the coach was Syd Millar. That cost our team a point.
After I discovered that Mike was a fellow folkie, we started going to the Woodman Folk Club in Kingswinford. The folk night was and broke the monotony of boarding school life. We used
to catch the Wolverhampton bus, walk to the Woodman, enjoy the music and the Bankss bitter, before taking a late bus back to Stourbridge. I was never very close to Mike, but those weekly outings were the closest we came to being best buddies.
Apart from our excursions to the Woodman, Mike and I went drinking in Stourbridge – to The Bird in Hand, a Bankss pub on Hagley Road, and sometimes further afield. Mike was not a real ale fanatic, as I was, and used to patronize the pub closest to OSH, The Shrubbery Cottage on Heath Lane, which I avoided because the beer was horrible pressurized M&B. Anyway, we both enjoyed the occasional tipple and chinwag. The talk would often be about school matters. I remember once, at the Bird in Hand, Mike and I were joking about slippering naughty boys, and some young women overhearing us took exception to our remarks. And I will never forget drowning my sorrows in The Bird in Hand after the disastrous first night of the school play I was directing: ‘Breaking Point. Mike was there with me, along with Bob Wood, my Head of English. Both of them were sympathetic,
Bob Wood even saying the performance had been quite good - a classic case of damning with faint praise.
Mike and I both fancied the pretty young nurse, Vicky East, who lived in the Founders flat. We took turns at being alone with her, but neither of us got very far because the resident Lothario, Laurie Benge, wooed and won her. He had a car, which gave him a decided advantage over myself and Mike. I am happy that Mike eventually got married and led a life, unlike all those old bachelor boarding masters who were married to OSH: Spud Bartlett, Griff Bradley, Peter Davies (to name but three).
