Bridge Over Troubled Water

Many thanks to vivacious for the great header.

Bridge Over Troubled Water

By

Simon & Garfunkel – 1970.

I don’t know if it’s the same for every generation but the decade incorporating my teenage years will always be my favourite. The Sixties truly was a great time to be growing up and despite some trials and tribulations will remain for me the best years of my life, in many ways. But all good things come to an end as everyone is aware. The Seventies would be a very different era.

The second year students at college were always sent to live in digs with Barnsley residents brave enough to take young girls into their homes. Vivien, Kath and I found ourselves lodging with an old couple where rules and regulations were as predominant as they had been in the college. Needless to say many were broken during our stay there but at least the digs were closer to the town centre, enabling us to have more of a social life.

The workload was still extremely heavy and the lecturers proving to be more unfair and biased than ever. Several students seemed to be singled out to be accused of any petty crime the staff could invent, regardless of whether we were the culprits or not. I still had many moments when I wanted to throw the towel in, leave and return home to a different career. I often wish I had but hindsight is something we’re all familiar with too. However I was halfway through the course now and decided to see it to the end if I could.

I still returned to Nottingham most weekends, hitchhiking on the new M1 motorway either with friends or alone. It didn’t seem too dangerous a thing to do in those times but I guess we were just so eager to escape the college we’d take our chances whatever the consequences. My weekends included travelling the twenty miles to the Sanatorium on public transport to visit my Mum, who hated every minute of her long confinement in hospital and made us all aware of the fact.

My second teaching practice took me to a school in Pontefract which could hardly have been a worse spot being so far away from the college, particularly in February during a very bad winter. It wasn’t easy rising extremely early to travel there, endure a gruelling teaching practice and return home on snowbound roads to see my mother and help out my Dad at home at weekends.

I still worked at the Bookmakers during holidays and saw Nigel whenever I was home. He’d become apathetic about finding a suitable career, was involved in minor corrupt moneymaking schemes and committed several traffic offences which he was devious and lucky enough to escape from. Our social life had become rather stale too; spending evenings at Jean and Carbolic Dave’s flat listening to depressing Leonard Cohen music or playing darts at the local pub. But I guess I was too tired and harassed to bother complaining much and despite everything we still had deep feelings for each other we couldn’t cast aside.

After the long summer break of 1970 we returned to college. It was tradition for final year students to return to halls of residence but we’d confronted the lecturers on this one and won. We’d been told to find our own digs and they washed their hands of us, hoping I suspect we’d wind up crawling back begging to be taken in. Kath had transferred to a college nearer home for her last year so she could help out with her Mum who was very ill. This left Vivien and I looking for a flat or house to rent in Barnsley. The day term started we still hadn’t found anywhere and neither had several others, so we smuggled ourselves into college at nights and secretly slept in the empty rooms. We would not even consider admitting defeat and after a couple of weeks found ourselves a lovely little house which we shared with three other students.

I have very fond memories of that house and the happy if often bizarre times we spent there. Five young ladies let loose on Barnsley once out of college, free from the restrictions of the previous two years was bound to provide fun and entertainment. There were boys of course, but nothing of any consequence. I remember Steve who I think worked his way through every college girl of reasonable appearance, Kevin who enjoyed driving us around the Yorkshire countryside at midnight and Joe, a local miner who had the body of Adonis but sadly the brain of Pooh bear. He did provide me with one of the funniest weekends of my life in Blackpool however, though I doubt he was aware of my amusement.

The little house on Shaw Lane was indeed my bridge over troubled water and will always hold a special place in my heart as will the many people I met and spent time with there. Some pleasant recollections at least of my final year in education which would come to a close in July of 1971. The times they were a changing.

Nigel and I at a dinner dance held by the Bookmaker’s firm we worked for.