Having been given some teaching at the University of East Anglia by Alastair Grieve, a history of Victorian Illustration in 1970, necessitating detailed hand-outs and long, long booklists, I recognised on the first day that this approach would not do. For the first few weeks I drifted around rather like a Chaplain. In the Life Class, I drew up a Chair to talk to one boy who became incensed because he was drawing it. I found that after 2pm, my services were popular among the students because many members of staff were late back from the Pub, the infamous Red Lion just up the road. I developed a keen sense of my own worth with very little justification other than I was the only man standing.

What signs alerted me to the true nature of art school education, a distinction between Norwich School of Art and a conventional University? I could observe as a Visiting Lecturer without the annoyances of initially attending Academic Boards, and without being drawn into Power Struggles. The longer I taught at Norwich School of Art the more my independent stance was recognised by the students, and the more I found my greatest successes were achieved in the Lecture Room which I found as close as dammit to writing and performing reviews at University.

With a smattering of knowledge of the Law, there were aspects of the conduct of affairs that worried me. If I felt not the slightest impulse to blow whistles or lead a reform movement, but I knew conversion of goods when I saw it, represented by paying students for their contributions to staff freelance work in materials such as Letraset and painting materials. Only when the Authorities suspended the Treasurer was it clear that financial ineptitude was wider than merely dispensing Letraset, but involved major neglect of the usual financial protocols. I was making photocopies at the University and was talking to an operator whose husband was in the local CID and got the whole murky tale.

Vocational Design students came from poor backgrounds, often from agricultural families. Several had to drop out of their studies out of poverty, yet the Hospitality budget at the School would have covered the expenses of several who had returned to field work. My portrait of the place is of course a restricted one, partial and many, many years ago. I have every confidence that many of the abuses once discovered were never repeated.

One event I witnessed and was then given further details of by participants was the School’s attempt to replace A.J.Stevens, the Vice Principal, an affable and distinguished architect, approachable and debonair. A short list of candidates was prepared and a number of applicants with their portfolios invited to attend interviews. One of those invited was my old pal Brian Love who had already been teaching in Design and Illustration. Each candidate gave a presentation and at four p.m. were invited to meet the Staff, several of whom were only just in from the Pub. Brian tells me that the printed timetable broke down early as the meeting spilled out into the vestibule. One of the Governors was showing an unhealthy interest in the voluptuous Head of the Students Union, and a fight broke out as to whether the Vice Principal’s job amounted to more than a bucket of spit anyway. The spirit of Carnival only intensified, much to the passing students’ amusement. There was a clear view of proceedings in the Principal’s Room from the first floor of the Graphic Department opposite. One senior member of staff was scrabbling about under the table nibbling people’s knees, and at nine o’clock the caretaker had lost patience. “Right you lot,” he shouted flashing the light switch  “off home the lot of you.” The festivities by this time resembled Trimalchio’s Banquet, and the celebrants made their way up to the Red Lion, by which time all pretence at appointing a successor to A.J. had been forgotten. The phrase, There was no appointment…” hardly covered the proceedings.

I have been criticised for a tendency to self righteousness. I had seen some merry old pranks in the offices of Messrs Lawrence Messer and Co., but nothing so exuberant, baroque and hilarious as the unfolding of the Day of Appointment. I am not censorious, and tried to discover more of later events. I got a lift in many mornings from Harvey Lane with John Love, the replacement Treasurer directly appointed by City Hall. He lived near me. His discretion and integrity were immense but he would raise his eyes at new abuses and organisational infelicities. When I was about to leave for a job at Brighton, he tried to persuade me to stay but I was looking for experiences beyond the small provincial school of art.

I made the mistake early on in referring to my previous legal experience. Few people realised this was only two years of failed clerkship, but whenever legal problems emerged, as they often did, my opinion was invariably sought.  The Summer Term was a dangerous period as Assessment Procedures throughout the courses were pretty primitive. The School often followed the Itten principle of assessment by hidden urges. It was to be expected that eventually a student (preferably with money) would appeal against rule by diktat and whim. With little notice and few credentials forced to appear as advisor when an enraged student who had worked hard and with integrity was summarily dismissed by a pair of ideologues. His Barrister wiped the floor with the Assessment procedures, which to anybody’s eyes were self-contradictory and in places pure gibberish. By averting my gaze I did prevent the Principal singling me out as their Legal Rejoinder Man.

Of course this was not restricted to Norwich because every Art School in Britain at that time was devoted to the furtherance of Fine Art with an occasional nod to the vocational possibilities of Graphic Design to persuade anxious parents. Illustration was what you did when your mahl stick broke or you turned out to be colour blind. Nevertheless Funding Bodies, while hesitant to be charged with Philistinism, insisted on businesslike standards of planning, accountability and fairness.

It sounds irresponsible of me to take this so lightly, because I had witnessed similar sharp practice in the City of London, except it was on a larger and more profitable scale. When the CEO of the Association of the Unit Trust Managers skipped with the till, I was drafted in to deal with the Press. The otherwise blameless Secretary to the CEO and I memorised the leaflets and called Press Conferences; it was all mimicry and bluff. It was the same at the Art School where my demure silences at crucial points persuaded people I knew more than I did. . Because people wanted me to be there and help. I inspired confidence and still don’t know why it was so. I didn’t really persuade myself. My powers of literacy were much vaunted. My powers of mind-reading legendary. My memories of past conduct and events were treated as definitive. In the end I brought comfort, and that suited me as I was paid well.