In my diaries I mention a large number of people. I describe the more important ones here.
The dates are the rough time range in which I mention them.
Kingcup
Mr. King, Christian unknown, was my Latin teacher from 1962 to 1964. He was known for his
reference to people he despised as “spineless Philistines”.
Ahmad bin Mahmuddin (1964-1967) was, of course, the son of Mahmuddin bin Ngah, and a
couple of years older than I. Like his father, he also played the flute.
Ananda Krishnan is a friend
of the family. We've known him since his university days in Melbourne in the late
1950s.
Ben Weed was Randall Carter Unmack, the headmaster for most of the time I was at the
school. He retired at the end of the 1965-1966 academic year.
Bev is my sister, Beverley Dawn Lehey at the time.
Boris Wilson (1963-1967) was my English teacher at Kings. He was a rather colourful
character, and I heard more of his exploits while
in Lumut on 27 March 1967.
Carmel Paull was a friend of my mother's. She was interested in photography, and we
spent some time together. She left me with the feeling that she wanted to seduce me.
Clod was the nickname of Mr. Morgan, our chemistry teacher.
Corinne Young was a girl I met
in Kuching in July 1969. We never
had a relationship, but we stayed in distant contact for about 5 years.
This is not a good photo, just the best I have: most of the photos I took between 1966
and about 1980 have been lost.
Yellow, Gleasy or Yel was really called Chaun, a rather fat Chinese
from Hong Kong. The nicknames have
nothing to do with racism: just about everybody got detrimental nicknames at school, and
this was the best people could come up with. I got on quite well with him.
David Rozalla was the brother of Teen Rozalla,
and we got on very well together, long after my involvement with Teen came to an end.
This is not a good photo, just the best I have, a crop of a larger photo: most of the
photos I took between 1966 and about 1980 have been lost. The fist in the foreground is
coincidental.
Pui Cheng Wui was a schoolfriend
from Kota Bharu in the mid-1950s.
Daljet Kaur was one of Gurdip Singh's sisters. We had some discussion about the
spelling of her name, but it's probably really Thaljeet.
Devi Kaur was another of Gurdip Singh's sisters.
Drax was the nickname of Mr. Baker, who taught us mechanics. He was a colourful person:
the nickname suggested Dracula, and
referred to the scars he got on
the Burma railway. His parents
had been in Kota Bharu, and he
tells me they were instrumental in starting
the Kelantan silverware trade.
Miss Gill was my piano teacher, and she lived on the perimeter of the school grounds.
She didn't count as academic staff
Gurdip Singh was a Sikh friend
in Kuala Lumpur. He had a
number of attractive sisters.
Hugh Lane was a schoolmate of mine, who departed spectacularly for homosexuality. His
surname sounds very much like mine, and that, along with the prejudices of our teachers,
dragged me into the affair.
Lokman bin Mohd. Noh was a school fried of mine
at St. John's
Institution in the early 1960s.
Eileen (a corruption of her real Chinese name, which I forget) was ostensibly our cook,
but since we downsized she also performed the duties
of Amah.
Guy Belsham
*** Jim McGibbon
*** Lyn/Lin? Leipnick?
Jayne Philpott was a girl I met on a train on 24 September 1967. I
corresponded with her for a while, but it fizzled in early 1968.
Karen Weisbach (now Tatari) was the girlfriend of Matin
Tatari in 1967 to 1969. I don't know when they married.
Mahmuddin bin Ngah was initially my flute teacher round 1960, and subsequently a good
friend.
Jenny Hallett was my girlfriend from mid-April. She was Paul Hallett's sister.
Skiv was the nickname we gave to my house master Peter Harvey.
Jenny Paton was a girl I met in Kuala Lumpur. I had some idea that she might be
interested in me. If she was, it evaporated when I visited her in April 1966.
Sandy Schaedel (now Semmens) is my cousin. She has lived her whole life
in Adelaide
I think Gillian da Souza was a classmate of my sister in the late 1950s. She was quite
nice, but for some reason I ignored her.
Jimmy was the nickname we used for Mr. Edwards, whose Christian names may really have
been Timothy George. I also called him Slob on at least one
occasion. Jimmy Edwards was in
fact a comedian at the time; coincidentally I knew his brother Skip from Netherton
House.
Larry Greaves
Malcolm Lennox (1961-1968) was a classmate. In class we frequently did things in pairs,
and since we were often seated alphabetically by surname, I ended up being paired with
him in chemistry and physics. Completely coincidentally, Malcolm also holds the
distinction of the longest association of any classmate. We went to prep school
together, and in September 1961, when my mother first brought me there, she asked some
question of a schoolboy on the train, who proved to be Malcolm. And long after leaving
King's, I bumped into him in London, and he put me up for a few days.
Paul Callow was a friend who just happened to be the son of a colleague of my father's
in Malaysia.
Paul Hallett was a schoolfriend with whom I became more friendly mainly because I fell
in love with his sister Jenny. Like me he was very interested in photography. At
school he had an undeserved reputation of being stupid, resulting in his nickname
“Thicky”.
Pauline Sissons was a girl I knew and had an affair with from late August until early
October 1969.
Poop or Pad were nicknames we gave to Mr. Padfield, the physics teacher.
(Richard?) Pentney was the new headmaster of King's from September 1966.
Ruth Erdin was a girl I met in England in May 1969.
We had a brief affair, but for some reason I was quite ambivalent about her.
Simon Atkinson (1963-1966) was a school friend, one of my better ones.
Sonny Rajah was a
friend and later fiancé of my sister Bev. He later became one of my best friends.
Sonia Baudouy (1963-1967) was the proprietress of Netherton House, the holiday home
in Combeinteignhead where I
spent many school holidays. She was also my guardian while in England, since my parents
were in Kuala Lumpur.
Sue Fortescue was the love of my life from May 1970 until about March 1972. We got
engaged in September 1970, not a very clever idea in
view of the fact that she started at
the University of Oxford
about 3 weeks later.
Ricky Cookson was a (very) white South African with strong
pro-apartheid views. Despite that
we got on quite well. I later heard that he died at an early age (under 30) in a car
accident somewhere in Western Australia.
Rowena Scrimshaw (also called Nina) was a girl I met in July 1969. We were rather
attracted to each other, but her parents were (strongly) of other opinion, and nothing
ever came of it.
This is not a good photo, just the best I have: most of the photos I took between 1966
and about 1980 have been lost.
Shari (if that's the spelling) McGibbon was the sister of Jim
McGibbon.
Simon Atkinson was, along with Paul Hallett, my closest friend at school, though in the
course of 1966 I had more to do with Paul, doubtless also because of my relationship
with his sister Jenny.
Teen Rozalla was a girl with whom I was briefly involved in July and August 1969.
This is not a good photo, just the best I have: most of the photos I took between 1966
and about 1980 have been lost.
Popsy was Mr. Townsend, our French teacher. In 1966, he lived next door to the Sheldon
Room and opposite the Science library. He was probably the oldest teacher, and he
looked it. Rumour had it that he had only one lung.
He was very much of the “la ploume de ma tante” school, and every period he gave us a
vocabulary test: he handed out slips of paper, then wrote 10 words for translation on
the board. After a certain time, in which we were supposed to write down the
translations, he replaced the words one by one with the answer, during which we were
supposed to correct our slips. Most people waited until then to fill out the slips of
paper, and thus got 10 out of 10, occasionally 9 so that the cheating would not be so
obvious. I didn't cheat, and routinely came bottom of the class with 7 or 8 out of 10,
for which I received several detentions.
The last time I saw him was 6 November 1969. He remembered me well:
“Ah, Lehey, the boy who didn't cheat”. So he knew all along, and rather than praise me,
he punished me. I was amazed.
Gui Baudouy was the eldest son of Sonia Baudouy. In the time frame 1965-1966 he had a
flat in the West End
of London, and I took probably more
advantage of that than Gui would have liked.
John Hay was my great-great-grandfather. Many stories are told of him in the family.
It appears that he killed a man (drowned?) under dubious circumstances, fled to New
Zealand, and later returned to Victoria under the name Herbert and became a policeman.
My cousin Mark Doyle (“Louis
Nowra”) tells a slightly different version from the one I know in his fictional
memoir “The Twelfth of Never”.
Donald Tyson was my German teacher. I got on very well with him. His teaching methods
enabled me to learn good German at an early age. He was also interested in music, and
started a Russian course in which I participated, unfortunately with less good results
than with German.
The Normans
The Norman family were friends of my sister Bev in Tavistock, and I spent quite a bit of
time with them in May and June 1969. They were:
Mrs Norman herself. She was divorced, something unusual in those days, and probably in
her mid-40s. She kept quite an open house, and there were frequent visitors.
The oldest daughter, Susannah, called Sukey (and initially Suki in my diary). She was
round my age, and had Turner
syndrome (monosomal X), and looked a little unusual.
The next daughter was Sarah, about 3 years younger than I. She was very attractive, and
I was quite fond of her. I suspect something could have come of it if I hadn't been so
incredibly shy.
Dinah was a year or so younger than Sarah, and possibly even more attractive.
Then there were two sons, Peter and Timothy. They were pre-teen or early teens, and I
don't have much recollection of them, not even which was older.
