40s and 50s Memories
of all types and backgrounds. Obviously
facility with languages has helped. However,
I do not doubt that being part of a good school
community, rather than success in language
classes, had much to do with the appetite I
have for communicating with others and getting
to know them, an appetite still there in my ninth
decade. So I say a warm 'Thank you' to King's
and to all who sailed in her with me all those
years ago.
P. R. W. ROBINSON
Carpenter 1959
Paul Robinson ("Rax") left King's in 1959.
His nickname "Rax" stems from an incident
involving a block of RACASAN (a pungent
toilet cleanser) put down his bed. A member of
Carpenter House, he left as a House Prefect,
and recalls the Art Teacher Lyons-Wilson as
his favourite master. Art and the Army were his
key interests. He recalls that despite pleading
with "Sarge", Sgt. Major Wally Gooderham (ex
Coldstream Guards), to be a member of the
Guard of Honour for the visiting Field Marshal
Lord Harding, he was initially turned down by
Sarge, who said "No. Rax, you are too short!"
In the end Sarge relented and allowed "Rax"
to be in, but only at the middle of the back row.
When the beribboned Field Marshall emerged
from his huge black limousine, with two police
outriders, he turned out to be no more than 5ft 4
ins in his spurs, as can be seen in the photo. Art
and army continued to engage him throughout
his life.
Of his life after King's, he writes:
On leaving school, I went straight into the
King's Royal Rifle Corps (Greenjackets), based
at Winchester. I trained for four months, upon
which I had second thoughts when active
service in Northern Ireland loomed. I decided to
pull out of an Army career and instead started
training to be an Architect.
Rax in ranks, with Field Marshall Lord Harding et al
This course I followed at what is now Portsmouth
University and eventually I qualified RIBA, and
served two years with an architect's practice
in the Inner Temple, Fleet Street, London. It
was during this time that, one morning due
the pouring rain met on my usual walk from
the Embankment tube station to the office in
Fleet Street, I decided to invest a lot of money
(in those days) in an umbrella. The tip of the
said umbrella became stuck in the side of the
escalator step and became chewed up into
many pieces by the time I reached the top.
As I got into the office, soaking wet, the Big
Boss asked me if I could do a quick survey at
a restaurant down by the Thames. Although he
had given me the address it took me a long time
to find it (even a Policeman could not help) in
the basement of an Indian restaurant, with a
vaulted cellar under the river. This was filled
to the roof with rotting tomatoes, chapattis and
rats!
At this point I married and in due course our two
daughters arrived.
Overall, I worked as an architect in five different
practices, in Hampshire and in London. Then,
in 1987, I formed my own architect's practice in
Andover.
In 1997, I married again, a professional artist,
teacher and author, Wendy Jelbert. Wendy
makes art video films. Several years ago,
when she was making her first one, a very
nice gentleman came from Exeter to film her.
As I was Exeter born and bred we got talking
about times past, and I mentioned that when I
went home from school, I used to drop in to the
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