by Cardew Robinson

If I describe a slim, handsome young man with smooth fair hair whose twenty-two inch bottomed silver-grey flannels always boasted a knife edge crease, and whose blue blazer always looked as though it had come straight out of the window of a West End outfitter, you would not immediately think I was referring to a retired schoolmaster of 80 years or more. Yet that is the image I shall always retain of Charlie Crinson, not only because that was the way he always presented himseff to us in the form room, but because, even a year or two ago, the hand of time had touched him so lightly that I could still so easily see him as he had been in my days as a schoolboy.

Charlie was that wonderful rarity, a schoolboy's schoolmaster. We had several at HCS, lucky little devils that we were. 'Beaky' Fooks, still spry as a cricket at 96, was another one. It's a gift, of course. We used actually to welcome their arrival because we knew their periods were going to be fun, whatever the subject. In Charlie's case it was Religious Knowledge in IVd; and in IVd's case you couldn't have picked a less likely bunch to whom to impart it. But Charlie not only made the Testaments come alive, like some kind of classroom De Mille, he also got us talking and writing about the meaning of Life and what it was all about.

Charlie never had any disciplinary problems, not even with clowns like me. He held our attention from the moment he came in. He also had our admiration, because IVd thought they knew a man-about-town when they saw one. We always reckoned that Charlie, the moment he finished with his schoolmaster's day, hurtled up to the West End to dance the night away. Years later I once asked him about the truth of this rumour. He neither confirmed nor denied it, But in those days we all knew that when we left school we wanted to be like Charlie.

I remember how proud I was when, a week before the School Dance, a rather ambitious one-off affair, he asked me, "Are you bringing a woman, Robinson?" Just like that. Man to man. I blushed and said, "Yes, Sir, I'm bringing Doreen Balingall.' "Good man," said Chadie, and I felt ten feet tall.

Happily, I used to see Charlie from time to time, until fairly recently when he went back to the North East, at the Old Boys Dinners and at Paddington Tennis Club, where he was the President. He was still, as always, charming, smart and as kind and warm a human being as ever came out of Geordie-land. I am very glad that, even in IVd, I had the sense to appreciate Charlie, and for the rest of my life I shall remember him with affection and gratitude.