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Robert Eshelby
Let the Poetry Begin!
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I recently and quite unexpectedly made contact with John Vallins, my English teacher for several years while I was at King’s School Bruton in the 1960s. I still have five short essays marked by John when I was in the third form, aged thirteen and fourteen. Most of them were marked favourably and gave me a real impetus to my otherwise woeful academic work. I felt that, at least, I could write a decent English essay! John also taught me in the Lower Sixth form, before going elsewhere, eventually becoming headmaster of the celebrated Chetham’s School in Manchester. Chetham’s specialises in teaching very gifted young musicians, and John would have been an ideal head, as he was himself a viola player, an excellent teacher of English and a fine communicator. Another of John’s great loves was for the game of cricket. John coached the First Eleven which, at that time, included my twin brother, Jim. I well remember one Saturday morning sitting in the classroom suffering a lesson on one of our set books, ‘Samson Agonistes’, by John Milton. The other John was in a cheerful mood and was waxing lyrical about the plight of Samson, betrayed by his wife Delila, who has cut off his hair and thus deprived him of his superhuman strength, and has then been blinded by the Philistines and thrown into a prison cell! Samson who has previously boasted of killing a thousand men in battle with the jawbone of an ass, was feeling very dejected at this point in the narrative. Meanwhile John Vallins was enthusiastically declaiming the lines to us. Obviously, he was enjoying the drama of the piece, but it was quite clear that he had another drama on his mind; the First Eleven was playing later that morning. It was obvious to me that John was looking forward to the cricket as well as living the drama, as he was miming cricket strokes as he recited the text, scoring runs all over the field. What a joyful moment for cricket! Such a bravura performance! Meanwhile, it dawned on me that Milton and cricket could be loved equally. I already loved cricket! Teaching Agonistes
You scored so many runs that day without your cricket bat. Len Hutton smoking air guitar. You roared, Oh dark, dark, dark, click of tongue crisp off drive amid the blaze of noon, sweetest glance to finest leg irrecoverably dark, off cut cool cat total eclipse! stylish cover drive and wristy follow through for four! Milton loved your style that day. Bradman loved your soul. Dreary dungeon, light deprived dark as womb, waking firefly spotlights darkest corner of the room. Robert Eshelby, 17th July 2022 For John Vallins
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My LifeI was born in England soon after the war. I moved , with my family to Australia in 1966, where I was a soldier (briefly), a public servant, an opera singer, and an English teacher. Archives
November 2022
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