Advancing With Haddrill - Paul Feldman

Tony Haddrill... brings back some nightmarish recollections for me. He quite rightly saw me as a blot on his very fine Advanced English class and his various and persistent ways of letting me know it at least led me to one insight. Namely, one could be imbued with a fine degree of subtlety and sharpest of perceptions of life as it is expounded in great literature and still have a mile wide bitchy streak in one's character. I guess if it was good enough for Patrick White to be a bitch and a bastard according to Nolan it was fair enough for a rising young English Master to aspire to the same. Albeit a perceptive and very competent English Master, damn it.

From that little diatribe you may rightly conclude that I find it irresistible to contemplate various turning points and influences in the far-off days, a little like a devout Catholic working round a string of worry beads.  Despite the little nibbles of angst, in regretting not delivering the witty retorts to Haddrill that I always thought up, days or weeks after the event, I have safely relegated him to the list of interesting people I am glad to have known. But I must admit I have far fonder recollections of Christ Ellis.

[Chris Ellis was the son  of an Anglican minister and was himself a Christian, playing the organ at church on Sundays - we developed a caricature of Ellis senior as 'six-foot-four-inch Bible-bashing Father Ellis'  but on meeting the real man at his church near Bathurst on the Hill End trip found him to be anything but an Ian Paisley figure]

Anyway, I still get my kicks reading fiction of all sorts and pedigrees, for which I have to thank the total effect of the STHS English department. That is not withstanding the likes of Bernard Maguire (also christened Blarney Mc Flyer in another of Mark Ierace’s marvelous character inventions, alluding to Maguire’s propensity to find inspiration in the middle of an English lesson to launch into illustrated diatribes on life in the air force). I think there was even rumour of Barny’s Friday night ritual of getting pissed, dressing up in air force uniform and reliving the battle of Britain in a room full of model planes. Or was that just Mark’s inventive imaginings of Wing Commander Blarney?

Neil Treverrow

[The Masonic Lodge still offers a Ray Haddrill Prize for Best Mark in HSC English.]