I caught the school bus more or less at the gate about 8 a.m. And was home again about 4.30 p.m.
I was in 3 Latin, another mixed class (although Latin did become my only fail subject in School Cert three years later.)
Archie Campbell was Headmaster – an absolute prick of the first order.
Gus Madill was his assistant – quite good, used to teach us Latin and subsequently got the job of Principal once Papatoetoe High School to which both Rob and Sue attended., opened
But here again I found another one of those teachers who turned out to be a real gem.
One of those who really inspire their pupils to do their absolute best, encouragement, cajoling, whatever is necessary to extract the very best from his pupils.
Colin Atkinson was such a man.!!!!!!!!!
He taught us all 'Electricity' and I well remember his experiment of stringing wires down the side of the classroom/lab showing how transmission losses could be reduced by increasing the voltage etc.
No wonder I ended up making that almost my life's work. He even showed us such things as how a HT distributor cap worked and similar.
I was always 'most competitive' but there was a snag.
Her name was Ann Thomas (Actually Patricia Ann) and she regularly knocked me off 1st place in the class.
She even beat me at School Cert Time .
To say we had an ongoing tussle would be a good way to describe it.
Once again I was not all that good at Rugby as a player – but as a COACH I was 1st class!
Dad was coaching the team Rob was in and had too many boys to handle so asked me (I must have been 14 by then) to take some of the off his hands and make another team.
That first year the teams were co champions (because they simply could not be separated by games won, points scored, tries etc) – James Sykes under 4 st 7 and Warwick Sykes under 4st 7 teams.
As the years passed Dad moved up the ranks as coach with Rob's teams as Rob got older but I stayed coaching the up coming under 4st 7 boys for several more years.
I insisted on 'stick to the basics' and even now my comments such as when watching the All Blacks evoke comments from friends 'did you use to be a coach?' Yep I did.
One thing I was quite good at however was singing- I had (and still have) a quite powerful bass voice
While at PHS pupils were asked who wanted to join the choir.
Thinking of my 'rejection' at Southwell my hand immediately shot up, but most boys seemed to think singing was somehow 'sissy' so we ended up with about 50 girls and us 5 boys in the choir!
Our music teacher Miss Schmidt moulded us into shape and by all accounts did a marvellous job of it
But I must relate the taking of the choir photo. (I think I may even have found a copy ).
The photographer lined the girls up in 4 rows then had to work us boys in somehow.
He put a boy at each corner, then had me to worry about.
So he marched into the very centre of the girls separated two of them and said to me SIT!
SO there you have SYKES surrounded by about 50 teenage girls – oh joy.
My girlfriend at the time Janice (known as Shorty) was down the front at the end. I am not sure just what she made of it.
But she and I took dance classes together (at school) and even continued afterwards with Miss Weldon's dance school but never achieved the medal standard we were seeking.
My School Cert results were a little disappointing too, in those days we sat 5 subjects, and the top 4 counted towards the result, mine were something like
Electricity 95 Thanks to Mr Atkinson English 85 Thanks to Mr Bartley Maths 80 Again thanks largely to Mr Bartley French 51 remember I had started this at Southwell Latin 47 my fail subject
You can imagine how I felt when I discovered that Ann Thomas had beaten me by 2 marks !!!!
During my 5th form year I endeavoured to get some sort of apprenticeship within the electrical industry (pretty much all off my own bat)
In August I made the short list at NZED, (New Zealand Electricity Dept.), and in November (before even sitting School Cert) I was selected as one of the six apprentices to start on 5 January the next year. I was stoked!