Cannington College (4)

In the summer term there used to be a residential study tour that involved both students and staff. One of these tours forms the basis of a classic Cannington memory. In 1985 we took the students up to London for four nights. Mike Bryan arranged the visits – for which I was duly grateful because finding food-related places prepared to have students visit was always a time consuming and thankless task.

We drove up on the Monday so the first visit was supposed to be Billingsgate Market on the Tuesday. Of course Billingsgate only operates first thing in the morning so by the time we got there it was closing. Fair enough Mike and I were both to blame and we share the responsibility.

Wednesday was a useful visit to the Leatherhead Food Research Centre. No problems.

Thursday was another cock-up. For some reason Mike Bryan decided to take some of the students over to France! So he took the minibus which left the rest of us with no means of getting to Covent Garden Market. In the end I had to use public transport to get my half of the students across London  and unsurprisingly we got there too late to see anything useful.

On Friday Mike had arranged for us to visit the Barbican Centre (err, why?). When we got there we were not expected so the whole visit was pointless. Then we drove home to Somerset.

Fast forward to the next Tuesday. Clearly some parents had complained and Norman Dickie decided to blame me – and only me. I got the dreaded summons and Norman started to get very agitated. Mike Bryan was very much Norman’s pal so once Norman found out that most of what went wrong was down to Mike the whole business was quietly dropped.

Cannington College (3)

One of my favourite times of the year was the annual prize giving ceremony. The Principal used to give his review of the year and the lecturers sitting at the back of the hall used to keep count of how many times he mentioned the different departments that made up the college. In a typical year about 65% of what he said was about agriculture, about 34% about horticulture and about 1% about food technology. Indeed at least once he didn’t mention my department at all! Even when food technology became larger – in terms of full time students – than agriculture we still hardly got a mention.

Each Head of Department also used to write regular reports for the governors and for the academic board. This was another source of endless amusement because Norman Dickie used his reports to praise his friends and allies within food technology while the rest of us didn’t get a mention.  It was always those of us  “exiled” to the mobile classrooms and offices by the sports field that used to get ignored.

Norman always used to witter on and on about doing lesson observations for each member of the department. Three or four times a year he would mention this in the weekly meeting but it almost never happened. We would all sit there nodding wisely as he pontificated on the subject knowing full well that he would never get round to doing it. I wondered at the time exactly how Norman filled his day. All the more so once I moved onward and upward  because none of the duties that I took on in Daventry or at Guilsborough School ever seemed to be done by him.