“Not many readers of QE Connect will remember me, I presume, but I have still been asked to reminisce about my time at the School. My name is Dieter Pinkowski and I was the German assistant at Queen Elizabeth’s Boys’ School in Barnet from September 1974 to June 1975.
Almost half a century later, I decided to contact the School and ask whether I would be welcome to walk down memory lane one day in September 2024 – 50 years after I had first set foot there. I received a positive answer from Matthew Rose [Head of External Relations]. Both Matthew and the Headmaster made me feel very welcome on the day. I was shown around the buildings, I talked to a class of A-level students of German and I was invited to have a cup of coffee in the Headmaster’s study, where we had a lengthy conversation.
In 1974, as a 21-year-old university student of English and History (at TU Braunschweig) who wanted to spend at least a year in England before graduating, I was happy to be offered employment by the London Borough of Barnet as a foreign language assistant at QE (and Edgware Comprehensive) for ten months at a monthly salary of £66. I lived on Byng Road at first and moved to Normandy Avenue early in 1975.
At QE, my mentor was Kenneth W Carter, Head of Modern Languages. The colleagues teaching German that I remember best were Knuth Saam and John Osborne, who both helped me to settle down in my new environment and occasionally asked me to accompany them to their German classes.
My main job, however, was to do German conversation lessons, grammar and vocabulary with the A-level students. Being 21, the age gap between the sixth-formers and me was not that large, and I spent as much time in the Sixth Form common room as in the teachers’ staff room. Even today I remember all my A-level students (Upper Sixth: Andrew Norris, Keith Newton [pictured here], John Dixon, Adrian (Sid) Sinclair, Alistair Johnstone, Lower Sixth: David Peacock and Steven Cohen) and also a number of other sixth-formers (David Hulford, Peter Ward and Ben Glatt, Mark Gardener). I still exchange Christmas cards with John, who went up to Oxford to read German, and I helped first Andy and, years later, Pete to find employment and settle down in Germany. Being busy with my own career and family I lost contact with them when they moved to other parts of Germany and started their families. With Steven I sometimes went to watch his favourite club, Spurs, (even though I was, and still am, an Arsenal fan) and I enjoyed the friendly banter there. With Ben G. and a few others I went to Knebworth Park to see Pink Floyd perform Wish You Were Here for the very first time in public, and with Andy and Dave I attended a number of Cambridge Folk Festivals in the following years.
What did I do after my year at QE? Well, after finishing university, I trained to become a teacher of English and History, and eventually taught my subjects at a German grammar school. When I retired in 2019, I could proudly look back on 40 years of teaching.
Today I still try to visit Britain at least once a year. Having discovered long-distance walking for myself after my retirement, I have walked some of the National Trails: Cleveland Way, Hadrian’s Wall Path, Offa’s Dyke Path, Pennine Way – a pastime and a challenge I can warmly recommend.”