Auckland Grammar: the first week

At the end of 1945 I finished my stint at Papatoetoe School. The next stage was secondary school, and in my case there were two choices: Otahuhu College and Auckland Grammar.

My forte was in the academic area, and Auckland Grammar, then as now, had the academic reputation. I certainly had no skills in sports or what was called "manual training".

So my parents jumped through the necessary hoops to enable me to be enrolled as an out-of-zone entrant at AGS. There were several others from my class who were by-passing Otahuhu, one or two to Kings College and one or two like me to AGS.

The fact that my father had been a student at Auckland Grammar School from 1914, when the present building opened, to 1918, no doubt helped.

So I began the trek each day by commuter steam train from Papatoetoe Station to  Newmarket, riding my bike from home to the station, and walking with the other boys from Newmarket Station up the hill to the Spanish Mission architecture in Mountain Road.

Auckland Grammar was then the right size to fit into the building, although it grew during my time there and several "pre-fabs" were already to be seen on the edge of the playing fields above the main building. But we could all find seats in the school hall at the centre of the main building each morning, and listen to the Headmaster, Mr Littlejohn, read the Bible and the school prayer, while we read over and over the words of our Honours Board, which told us that the school had been founded in 1869 by Sir George Grey, Governor of New Zealand, and the names of the illustrious old boys who had won University Scholarships, and even Rhodes Scholarships in the past.

On the first day we sat an Entrance Examination, and then joined the older pupils for initiation into the school's cadet corps, which meant military drill in our heavy uniforms, and socks and shoes. I had almost never worn socks and shoes to school until that time and found it a real torture. We were also issued with old .303 rifles each day, and learnt to slope arms, and ground arms, and march with rifles on our shoulders -- all those boring activities that remind one of old fading films of armies from the Great War.

There was also the more informal initiation into AGS. Groups of older pupils roamed the playground at lunchtimes surrounding little knots of third formers and then performing the school's "war cries" around them, finishing with a ducking under one of the drinking-taps. This time-honoured practice was tolerated by the school authorities, until a more modern Headmaster, Sir Henry Cooper, stamped it out a generation later.

We all had to learn the war cries:

"Shall we give him a Tooley pie?"
"No"
"Shall we give him a kick in the eye"
"No"
"Shall we give him a penny-hapenny soda?"
"No"
"What shall we give him?"
"Glaxo!"
"Three hearty cheers for the Glaxo babies!"
"Hip-ray! Hip-ray! Hip-ray!"

These war-cries were at their most effective when performed against the pupils from another school when our First Fifteen was playing theirs. The other school got two and a half cheers. This was called "School Spirit", and it was the job of the prefects to encourage and teach it all.

Later in the week we were all called to the Assembly Hall and the results of the Entrance Examination called out. This was done in order of merit, and I was quite pleased when my name was called third. I was a year younger than most of the other Third Formers as the system at Owairaka had promoted me through the primers in just over a year rather than  the two normally taken.

This had advantages and disadvantages. It meant on the one hand that I could never compete physically with boys in my year, but it did mean that there were only three of us who were young enough to run in the under thirteen cross-country, and so I gained a certificate for coming third! Perhaps that was why I joined a Harrier Club later.