“I entered Bedford School just before my seventh birthday in May 1943 along with several other boys who had been at Miss Beale’s school in Kimbolton Avenue. Amongst these were Brian Howard, Richard Boxall, and John Rose. There would have been one more, Michael Gridley, but he had been killed in a bombing raid the previous year. He and I had shared a double desk at school. The circumstances of this fatal event were unusual. There had been a raid, over Birmingham I think, and the All Clear syren had gone but one lone plane was still making its escape and unloading its bombs on the way. The first in our area fell on Mr Laxton’s house. He was a noted Fruit tree grower. He was killed. The next bomb fell in a field just north of the Park. The third was a direct hit on the house of Rex Alston, the BBC cricket commentator. He had reinforced the under-stair area with concrete blocks and, although the house was destroyed, he and his family survived. Unfortunately, when the All Clear sounded, Mrs Gridley, who lived in the next-door house, took her two children back to bed. She was standing outside the house talking to the ARP Warden and, when they heard the bombs and the plane coming, dived into the ditch but the bomb on Alston’s house blew the whole top floor off the Gridley’s house next door and both Michael and his sister were killed.
Our first form was 1.6 and the teacher was Mrs Palmer, a lovely young woman married to Donald Palmer who was serving in the Air Force. When he returned, he was the Deputy Head of the Inky under Tom Snow and she ran the boarding house. Our classroom was in what is now the green pavilion shed (The shed was so when I last visited many years ago, so it may have gone by now.) There were wooden desks with an inkwell in the corner and some boy was usually appointed to go round and fill the ink pots from a larger pot. We used dip pens with scratchy nibs, so the Inky was not inappropriately named.”