At the end of this dorm, like all the dorms, was a small flat occupied by, at one time, by a Miss Wilkes, who was I think a junior teacher. She would have been very young, and was a nice looker. In addition to a private external door in the flat, an internal door was provided so checks could be made on the sweet little innocent boys, at times of major pillow fights and such! You can see the door ajar in the above picture. She immigrated to South Africa, Pretoria, I remember. A couple of us boys talked our way into her flat one night, in our jammies! Enough said, all very innocent and done in the best possible taste. Keith Mead was developing a way with girls/women! Just behind the corridor, about where the fire extinguisher is sited (by the way, there is no spell checker on here, did you notice?), so just behind the fire putter outer, is where my bed was. A little alcove for 2 beds, my chum Colin Staples slept in the other bed at a time, and after him Parves Tremashi occupied the position. Parvis was an Asian pucker wallah me lad, the only one at Linton in my time, not sure just where from, but Asian types were fairly rare birds in the early 60's, he made deputy head boy, when I was head. His dad would bring a big pot of curry on visiting days. We were not used to Asian curry smells, and it would create a stink in more ways than one! He was an ok guy, Parvis was. The dormitory was split into 4 bedrooms and each given names so they could be easily identified, or at least the inmates could. Each room had something like 12 or so bodies allocated, could have been more, I forget. In the centre on the ceiling was a night light, when centrally switched on, gave a soft reassuring glow. We also had wardrobe space, in which we had shelves to store our unused clothing; a small bedside cabinet housed some of our more personal belongings. I can’t remember ever having a theft problem at Linton. The other end of dorm one, had a larger flat where Mr. & Mrs. Laughlin lived, and they had a couple of small kiddies.
Toilet Inspection.
The infamous Mr. Core would creep around in the dark, on toilet inspection, looking for ''dribbles'' on the toilet floor, when found the whole section who used that particular toilet would be punished in some sadistic way. For crying out loud, this place was full of young boys, they were going to pee on the floor when they are half asleep in the middle of the night! We decided to thwart Core and his evil little ways by organising a regular nightly toilet inspection ourselves, and suspect drops of pee, were cleaned up before he had a chance to find it. Sad.
Talking about visiting days.
Visiting days were one Sunday per month, but may have been every third week. West Yorkshire single deck buses were laid on and departed from Chester Street Bus Station. These were generally the oldest wrecks of their fleet, real museum pieces, even then! I do not think there was a charge for visitors, to travel, the LA probably covered this expense, but if you could not make these buses, parents would have to pay there own way. Time allocated to visit was two hours. You could take your parents on a trip out, with permission, to the big city, actually Grassington; this was always referred to as ''The Big City''. There were one or two private cars that made the trip, but private car ownership, for the likes of our end of the social tree, was rare. I recall on occasions at least 5 or possibly more buses in the space at the back of the kitchens, where delivery vehicles would park when unloading goods. The buses could not be left on the road, as it was too narrow for anything to pass. Turning the buses was a delicate operation, much shunting and positioning took place. I do not think mum ever missed a visit, or if she did, Paul would come. he still lived at home, as he was 5 years older than me, still is actually! I was never in a position where nobody came to see me. We could of course, and were encouraged to, write home at least once per week, and a one hour lesson was reserved just for this privilege. The letters had to be inspected by the class teacher, who would try to educate when any grammar was awry, I don’t think it was ever a ''lets see what they are saying'', opportunity, after all one could write home at any time unsupervised, though I do not recall ever doing so.
