Would I take the job? Probably not. They said "We'll collect you here next week and show you the school, then take you out for a meal somewhere nice". They did, and plied me with lots of drink. "So, you'll take the job?". "I guesh I will, yessh...!" I heard myself saying - and the damage was done.

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That evening we arrived back at Eastwood House in March, the headmaster's then residence (since demolished…). I rolled out of the car, a Rover, which had doors hinged at the back. I inadvertently (or drunkenly?) left the back door open. Mr Potter drove into the garage. Crunch!  The door was nearly wrenched off. An inauspicious start to my career at the school…

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Years later the school caretaker, Ernie Quince, said to me: "Old Potter: that car was his pride and joy... He never did forgive you for wrecking it".  So here was a defining moment in my life: drunkenly accepting a job in a place I'd never previously heard of. Like many defining moments, it didn't feel very defining at the time.

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I learned more about March and the glorious flatlands as time went by. March was then a slow and serene and even sleepy town with a railway station at which everyone remembers changing trains; there were railway marshalling yards in those days, and some parts of the town still made use of what were euphemistically called "night soil" carts. The area around was subject to the Fen Blow (not helped by the fact that farmers often wouldn't plant hedges - why waste soil in which more potatoes could be grown?). Rumour had it that if a crime was committed in March, all the authorities had to do was to close all the level crossing gates to prevent the perpetrators escaping!

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Living in such a town would prove to be a shock to me, a London suburbanite born and bred: in March nearly, everyone was related to everyone else in some way, and you had to be careful who you spoke to about whom. I lived at 73A The Avenue, above Jack Frost's cycle shop, in a damp flat formerly occupied by Miss Shepherd, head of the Girls' High School. At rent-time one day I spoke to Mrs Morton, my indomitable landlady, about the unwillingness of Kirk Ogden to sell off a field of his next to the school. Miserable chap - was he being unreasonable? Mrs Morton then revealed that he was her brother. Oops!

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There was some strange language going on: I eventually wrote a number of books on Derbyshire dialect, but my first interest in accent and dialect probably came from Fen days.  There wasn't a lot to go on: there was a mid-morning snack called a DOCKY, and the local fair was STATUS. Two old men on bicycles might be heard shouting as they passed each other: "Worruptothenboor"?

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And then there was the unusual use of the word "that":  "I don't like it when that's raining... You want it wet, that's always dry..." If you don't find that rather weird, you're a real local!

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Who would have thought that a mere three years spent in March in my early twenties would have such a great impact on my life? But it was so. Here's some proof: I've been best man twelve times, and two of those times were for former pupils at March GS. I was best man for David "Bengo" Popple (from Whittlesey) and Sheila Whetton - I am godfather to their daughter Holly. And I was best man when Jaroslaw (Jary/Gary) Melnyk (from Chatteris) married Mary. Jary's scintillating guitar playing had been an inspiration to teachers like me and also to pupils like David Popple and Steve Bavister. I was honoured to be asked to give a reading when Steve Bavister married Amanda, and some years before I had offered up a few words at a raucous and drunken party at Holkham when Paul Goakes reached the magic age of 21. Paul and I have long been great friends, even when he was still at school, and his mother Elsie - a wonderful wee Scottish lady - was a surrogate mother to me in March. She was for some reason eternally grateful to me for having saved her only son Paul's life in a canoeing accident…

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They do say that it's tragic when parents outlive their children. Well, you might say that's it's equally tragic when teachers outlive their pupils. This year David, Jary and I were asked to say a few words at Steve Bavister's funeral. He had achieved so much in a short lifetime, and it was unbearably sad, sad news to hear of his passing.

When my wife Heather and I got married in 1999 in Derbyshire, there was a March Grammar School table at the reception. There sat former pupils and their wives and girl-friends (WAGs), including David, Jary, Paul, Jerry Marston (formerly a diplomat in the New Hebrides/Vanuatu), and former teacher Peter Place and his wife Alison.

THE KIDS:

Those were good times in March, and I have never regretted the time I spent there at a human-scale school, two-form entry and single sex.

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Cedric Potter knew all the pupils. When I took over as form teacher for class 2A he went through the list of names and gave a pithy summary of each boy: Jimmy Magee... Gary Beeken... Beeken, in the event, was just one of many Dutch surnames dating back to the seventeenth century when the Fens were drained. Others included Behagg and Ghelken. In later years I would pay attention to such names, among many others, when I compiled a new edition of the Penguin Dictionary of Surnames.

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Mostly I had very pleasant kids to teach, though not all were so bright. I once asked a class to write out the words of the Lord's Prayer, which they had recited ritually at morning assembly for years on end. Results included: "ARE father... WITCH art in heaven. HELLO be thy name..."

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Altogether sharper pupils included Jack Walsh. I once set a sixth-form class a homework task, to find some suitable quotations from "King Lear" - short, succinct, pithy. Jack piped up: "You mean, you want us to take the pith out of King Lear?"

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Not all pupils were to the headmaster's liking. One day a boy called "Gonger" Whitwell arrived late for assembly: "Look at you, Whitwell: arriving late... beastly long hair..."

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I've been in frequent email correspondence recently with a former MGS pupil called Stuart Fretwell, who reckons that he once got the better of Cedric Potter. Fretwell had gone to the shop at lunch-time, a big sin. "Do you realize, Fretwell, that I'll have a big say in whether you are recommended for a university place or not?" Nothing daunted, Stuart replied: "But, Sir, I thought you wanted to maximise the number of university places, for the sake of the reputation of the school." Potter fell uncharacteristically silent.

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Some kids suffered from their parents. At a parents' evening one mother admonished me: "I want to say that Kay likes this school, she's been very 'appy since we moved 'ere from London, but I told me 'usband I'd say it, and I must say it, that I don't think you learn 'em to speak proper..."

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THE STAFF:

School finished at about four, but few staff would leave for home much before five. Some would be involved with after-school clubs, others would be playing fives with the pupils in the much-loved Rugby Fives courts.  If you could have peeped into the staff room you would have seen Mr Lumley marking maths books with a cigarette burning slowly down... What I think of as the Cedric Fyson technique of smoking a fag.

There was always a cribbage session in full swing: "Fifteen two, fifteen four, fifteen six, a pair's eight and one for his knob is nine".

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There were plenty of nicknames being used for staff, some used by colleagues, others by pupils: Mr Lumley was called "Lum" by his colleagues, though he was "Tosh" to the boys; Deputy Head Nick Simpson was "Truckie" to the boys, and Cedric Ethelbert Maddox Fyson (initials "CEM") was known as "Cemmy". Brian Underwood (initials BLU) was "Bluey", or - because he was a strong disciplinarian - "Hitler". He became head of geography at Neale-Wade once Cedric Fyson had retired.

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There were even nicknames for me: "Simon Dee" (a long-forgotten TV chat show host, whom I resembled in those days); "Justin" (my initials are JST); "Chesty" (a mammary reference….); "Jake". But I was mainly known as "Boris" or "Bristly Boris". The fact is that in many ways I was still pursuing a kind of student lifestyle in those days, and I couldn't always find time to shave in the morning, arriving at school in a bristly state. This was especially the case if I'd been up until four in the morning talking philately with Cedric Fyson. That was a common occurrence, and I learned so much from Cedric that for a while I seriously considered giving up teaching and becoming a stamp dealer. I had never previously known anyone called "Cedric" - but here at MGS there were three such: Cedric Potter, Cedric Fyson and Cedric German, Head of English.

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No account of March Grammar School in the late 1960s would be complete without some mention of Cedric Fyson. He had taught many subjects in his time, but settled down as a geography teacher, eventually became Head of Lower School. Pupils found him a severe and stern character to deal with, but if they were lucky enough to participate in one of his famed trips abroad, they would find out what a sparkling and friendly chap he really was. I went on one such trip to Portugal, and have an abiding memory of the journey back home, when we worked our way through a train in the middle of the night until we found the compartment which was reserved for us. It was already full of people, naturally, but Cedric threw open the door, turned on the lights, and shouted: "I'm sorry, this compartment is reserved for us!" Cedric's wife Dorothy was always at his side on such occasions; she had a belief that everyone in the world could speak English, and would understand the language perfectly if you shouted loud enough…

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Cedric and I became great friends, though he was near retiring age, and I was a mere beginner at the teaching trade. We shared many interests, including travel, cribbage, philately and fishing. One Sunday we were fishing at a remote pond out in the Fens, having a tranquil time, watching our floats, playing crib, smoking endless cigarettes, and watching a great crested grebe which had a nest in the middle of the pond. Out of the blue another car turned up, and a March Grammar School pupil called Percy Goodyear got out. Unaware of our presence, he walked around the lake, talking to himself (for some reason or other) and making use of some very blue language: "F..ing place; supposed to be a good f..ing fishing place; I don't believe a f…ing word of it!". Suddenly he caught sight of the fearsome Cedric and myself. He stammered out a greeting: "Ohhh… er.. hello, Mr Fyson…."

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Following many a wee-hours stamp evening at Cedric Fyson's house I was rather prone to oversleep and be late for school. Let's just say that the fact was noted. So, one day I was approached by (Richard) Cedric German, and was admonished in a quiet, polite way. When I explained that I was hoping to buy a more reliable alarm clock that very day, Cedric offered to give me a wake-up call at home the next morning - belt and braces. I gave him what I thought was my phone number (it was new and unfamiliar); when I got home I realized that I'd made a mistake in that number by one digit, and though I tried to call him to warn him, I couldn't reach him (it turned out that he was at his mother's all evening). Next morning, I arrived at school on time - my new alarm clock having worked a treat - only to find that Cedric had used the wrong number I gave him, to disastrous effect. When the phone at the other end was answered, he shouted out: "Get out of bed, your lazy bastard!". The plaintive reply was: "This is Mrs Campbell speaking…". Dear Cedric, such a lovely man. Eventually he married a Neale-Wade pupil, Lilian Woods, and they had a family together, but he was plagued by ill-health and died a few years ago.

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In the end Cedric got his own back. He wrote a farewell tribute to me for publication in the Neale-Wade magazine. This was generally very kind, but had a few barbs attached. It began: "John's arrival in September 1967 brought an air of culture and elegance to the English Department" [blimey!]. And then: "The fame of his drama lessons was noised abroad.  John was a most efficient stage manager for the school play and an enthusiastic member of the Anglian Players. He was, indeed, an enthusiast: for swimming and late-night bridge, though not, perhaps, for early rising, being alarm clock proof. John also refereed..."

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The English department eventually acquired the services of Frances Pickles, known as "Fru", a fine teacher and a spirited lady.    George Lockwood and I once accompanied a school party to Orléans in the Loire valley. As we crossed Paris, I remember thinking: "I wish that one of these Métro stations could be my very own Métro stop". And so, it would prove to be. When I left March, I went to teach and study in Paris, and the Place d'Italie became MY Métro stop.

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Who else? There was Bill Hite, who died a while ago, a charming and entertaining man. One of his eyes was brown, the other was blue. He was ambidextrous, and would amaze pupils by starting to write on the board with his left hand, then switch to his right… 

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Harry Simms, a mathematician, lived at Downham Market. He had lived abroad and would entertain us with stories of his life in East Africa - like the time when he had once chased truant children by making use of one of those lever-pumped railway trolleys of the sort you can see in the film Blazing Saddles, or in Buster Keaton movies from the silent screen era. Harry was a short man - was he lifted aloft and jerked off the trolley as he went tearing after his prey? The very thought used to amuse us no end.  Harry would often talk of the town of his birth - the former coal-mining settlement of Ilkeston in Derbyshire, where his grandfather, Joe Woolley the butcher, had been Mayor. In 1973 I started teaching at Ilkeston Grammar School. As it happens, the late great MGS/NWS teacher Peter Hewitt MBE had done a spell of teaching practice at that very school when he was a student at Nottingham University many years before. I lived in Ilkeston for fifteen years, and it slowly dawned on me... Wasn't this the town which Harry Simms had spoken of all those years before? I once raised the question with two old drinking pals of mine, Jack Lally and Nelson Bestwick, saying: "I once taught with a man in the Fens… his grandfather was Joe Woolley the butcher...". They both exclaimed at once: "Ah! How is Harry?"

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Others? There was Peter Langton, the bearded spider expert and all-round good bloke, who would collect staff dinner money once a week, sitting down like the gospel-writer St Matthew at a table, he would declare loudly: "Gentlemen - I am in receipt of custom!" Time to cough up. Then there was the classics teacher Trevor Weighill, originally from Framwellgate Moor, County Durham, He and I became great friends, but the headmaster's wife Phyllis was always concerned about our bachelor lifestyles: "I must get my daughter Sue to teach you how to make a cottage pie".

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And let's not forget Phil Vallack-Smith, who lived at West End and was eccentric and a breath of fresh air, or the late lamented Charlie Fox. I once said to him: "Charlie: could you just make me a Spanish-style guitar capo out of wood and nylon?" "Oh, for goodness sake, John, not another JUST job!"

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In the course of time this all-male Grammar School would become the Neale-Wade School. Girls arrived! They had such a civilising effect on the school, as did some female members of staff who came over from the High School - characters like the wonderful Annis Evans, who suffered from an unusual circadian rhythm which meant that she would stay awake every other night, listening to her jazz records non-stop. I must draw to a close, but just have time to tell you about the time when I was fined for letting off fireworks in the street whilst waiting to go into March's very own cinema. The policeman who nabbed me remarked (quite reasonably): "We expect this kind of behavior thing from schoolchildren, you know, Sir". This heinous crime would rear its ugly head many years later when I applied to be a magistrate in far-away Ilkeston. The Lord Chancellor's Office had unearthed details of the dire offence, and the chairman raised it as an issue. The interviewing panel had a hard job stifling their chuckles.

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In the early 1990s I gave up teaching for good, and now earn my living as a genealogist, writer, lecturer and genealogical bookseller. Oddly enough I found myself for many years working in the Fens again as part of the editorial staff of Family Tree Magazine, which is based in Ramsey. There I was, after all those years, in digs in West End, March. The wheel had come full circle, and the Fens had me in its grip again…