The Eleven-plus

The prospect of the examination known in South Lincolnshire as the Eleven-plus hung like a lead weight around my shoulders just after the end of the Second World War. I thought I was reasonably bright. I could read. I devoured books, and I could write moderately well even though the handwriting left something to be desired. And I knew certain facts about certain parts of the world. But the thought of the eleven-plus was terrifying, because it would decide which school I went to next - grammar or secondary modern, or stay put at the town's senior school. The problem was, when the time came for the exam, book reading and general knowledge just didn't come into it. Fright inevitably gained the upper hand.
I remember some of the exam papers even now. There was one on maths. I was not good at maths, and it was an awful drawn-out struggle. There were also a lot of what I would call puzzle questions. Questions such as, 'Which motif is the odd one out?' and 'What letter/number is next in sequence?' It was all as gibberish to me as 'if A and X equal 53, and Y is 3, what is B and E?'
A few weeks' later I knew I had failed. When the whistle went one playtime and we all queued at the school door, one or two of the boys bumptiously announced they would soon be going to the grammar school. 'You've failed,' one of them said to me. Obviously, those who had passed had been told their results in advance.
My luck changed when it was found I was top of the failures and that there was one place left at the Gleed secondary modern school at Spalding.
On my first day at the new school the new intake, 'failures' all, must have been looking glum because when the teacher faced his new class he said: 'Well, cheer up. You're the lucky ones if you think about it. If you'd gone to the grammar school you'd be learning Latin and have homework every night. We don't do that.'
He was right, and we all cheered. It was going to be OK after all.