The highlight of my education was passing my 11+ which gained me a scholarship to the world’s oldest boys public school, it was founded by Edward The Confessor almost a 1000 years earlier.
I too became part of the school’s history as the first pupil to fail every one of the O-level exams he sat. Rather than admit defeat the school administrators created a special form for me “Transitus”, Latin for bridge or passing through.
Eventually I got there and aged 16, the headmaster took me to one side and said “ Mr Jones you are welcome to join the sixth form but past performance suggests you will be 26 years old when you leave, and I have no doubt that had Edward the Confessor still been around you would have been beheaded years ago”.
To save any further humiliation my parents removed me from school and sent me to Paris where I lived and worked for a year with my Uncle Riquet who was the assistant stationmaster at the Gare De L’Est. It was 1964....
Francophile Peter Jones reminisces...