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Stuart Sutcliffe and I
were contemporaries and experienced five years of
Grammar School life together. Stuart was born in
Edinburgh also in 1940. I understood that his
father was a seaman and was away from home quite
a lot. He was slight of build and wore glasses.
He made up for his stature by being quite
assertive in his attitudes and opinions, which
sometimes made him a target for the bigger boys
in the class. This scenario would sometimes be
acted out in the back rows of the classrooms,
when the teacher's back was turned or in the
playgrounds during morning or afternoon recess.
His defence against this mild form of bullying
was to befriend myself and my best friend at the
time, David Aikman. David and I set next to each
other in class and saw quite a lot of each other
after school. Our personalities clicked and we
always saw the funny side of life. We did not
have any trouble with the bigger boys - since we
tended to get out of scrapes with our humour -
whereas Stuart always tended to take up the
argument. He befriended David and I from the
beginning and looked upon us as his protectors.
There was safety in numbers! He became so
grateful one year that he gave each of us a
present at the end of term. I can't remember what
David received but I was given a book on golf
titled 'Homes of Sport - Golf' which I still
have. Stuart knew that I was becoming keen on the
game. [Norman Allanson] |
