John Lennon

1940 - 1980

The Vanished World of a Woolton Childhood with John Lennon

by DAVID ASHTON

Page 4

Strangely enough the last time I saw John to speak to was in Bioletti's. It must have been after the success of 'She Loves You' because he had become well-known. I was home from Denmark where I was studying agriculture intending to go to the Danish Adult Education College or Folk High School called Rodding Folk High School.

John asked me while he was sitting in the chair and talking to me through the mirror what I was doing and I explained the philosophy of the Danish Folk High School movement and that the founders, N.F.S.Grundvig (1789-1872) a visionary genius and inspired and pioneered by the educator Christen Kold (1816 - 1870) had the idea that each and every individual had the potential to blossom and flower and have a rich, fulfilling life.

The idea was not to have any entrance exam or exit exam, but through lectures, talks, discussion and actually doing, to let everyone develop to their full potential.

John was also later to go himself to a Danish Folk High called the New Experimental College at Skyum Bjerge, Thisted, Thy in North Jutland in the 1970s where they had an interesting Rector called Aage Rosendahl Nielsen. Whether our talk in Bioletti's had inspired him to go or not I will never know because I lost contact and did not take it up with him when I should have.

But one thing, thinking back. John was a very good philosopher and was deeply concerned about the development of the human individual - lessons I think we learnt listening to conversations in Bioletti's in Penny Lane as kids. This was my own Danish Folk High School or Adult Education College.

Sunday School at St Peter's Church Hall, Woolton and at the bottom of Church Road, Woolton next to my Granny Ashton's House in School Cottage - now, that really is a vanished age!

There must have been 600 or 700 kids used to go to Sunday School Lower, Upper and Bible Class taken by Jack Gibbons, one of the unsung heroes without whom I guess there might have been no Beatles, no Quarrymen, no St Peter's Youth Club and even no sense of purpose in our youthful lives.

I loved to get Jack Gibbons talking about the Battle of Britain when he was stationed at I think it was Biggin Hill in Kent as an Aircraft Fitter.

Jack would tell our Bible Class of Churchill saying "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few" and would tell of young men little older than ourselves learning to fly Spitfires and Hurricanes in just a few weeks and being killed in just a few days. But they died as heroes so that we would all have the right to free speech, democracy, health and welfare.

I was often moved to tears listening to him as was John and the others he came with including Nige Walley, Pete Shotton, Alan Walpole, Rod Davis and all the others whose names I cannot remember. If any I have left out are reading this, please get in touch as I would love to hear from you.

John Lennon attended all of them and I was nearly always in the same Sunday School and Bible Class with him. There was a motive! We had a Sunday School trip to the seaside resort of Southport, North of Liverpool and in those days of single-sex schools Sunday School and Bible Class were Uni-sex so you got to sit with and talk to those strange creatures, girls!

For those who did not have sisters there was often not much chance in the formative years, with parents or guardians looking on, to get to know girls.

I remember that we were getting near the top class of the Upper Sunday School in St Peter's Church Hall. We sat next to the kitchen. The top class itself went into the kitchen with its strange gas-fired ESSME water boiler.

We must have been 11 or 12 years old at least. 'Ma' Davies, the Sunday School teacher, got on about Scribes and Pharisees and how they had treated Jesus. John Lennon got very annoyed about these Scribes and Pharisees and said they must have been Fascists. 'Ma' Davies blew her top and said that Fascists were much, much worse than Scribes and Pharisees.

I also asked her if John was not right, just to support my mate but I had no idea what fascists or Scribes and Pharisees were in fact. We were hauled up in front of the Rev Pryce Jones, rector of Woolton Church, who told us off in his lilting Welsh accent and then decided to cane us for causing trouble.

But he could not find a cane so he got hold of spinster Bertha Radley's gamp (umbrella) which had crocodile skin and head on the handle. John got it first, one on each hand and then when Prycee hit me the gamp handle broke off and I remember to this day Bertha Rigby saying " Oh my poor crocodile". Bertha Radley was one of the Woolton family of Radley who Paul immortalised in his wonderful song 'Eleanor Rigby'.

For us boys who were in the church choir she was a terror as she had a knack of flicking your ears if you did not hit the right treble note and giving you a 'thick swollen lug hole' as we called it.

I never sat, if I could avoid it, on the women's Cantata side (the boys sat in front pews, the women behind) of the St Peter's Choir. I sat on the men's Descantato side to keep away from the two terrors, 'Ma' Mambridge and Bertha Radley who, I am sure, were lovely folk but they terrified me as a boy as they did the rest of us.

During one of the Reverend Pryce Jones' very boring sermons (though he was a very nice man he was not a good preacher) I had got my Boy Scout Pocket Diary out and was reading it.

John took it off me and altered the Boy Scouts' law which says 'A Boy Scout is thrifty' to ' A Boy Scout is Fifty'. We got our choir pay docked for talking in a sermon but on reflection it was yet another example of John's creative mind.

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