ABSTRACT
The first time I met Jack Simmons was one evening in September 1929 when we both walked in as new boys – King’s Scholars – at Westminster School. There were 40 King’s Scholars altogether. The eight of us elected that year were thrown together in a common room, and we tried to find out about the others. Jack and I had never met before. He was a south Londoner from Carshalton in Surrey; I was a north Londoner from the Hampstead Garden Suburb. We soon discovered that we were both interested, in a boyish kind of way, in looking at railways; but we came from two different worlds of railways. The Southern was very much a developing entity of its own kind at that time. That first evening, he said, ‘I bet you can’t tell me the headcode of the South London line from Victoria to London Bridge.’ I said, ‘Well, I can. It’s 2.’ It was actually easy to remember – all the others were letters. After that we found we had a good deal in common. Neither of us cared for sport. Jack already had a problem with his twisted spine (scoliosis), though that did not prevent him from doing a lot of things. We were expected to participate in sports – cricket or football, or rowing. If there was a football match against Charterhouse or another school, we were all turned out to watch and shout for our side. Jack and I became adept at dodging the column, and on our way to and from the playing field we sat together at the back of the bus and talked about many things, including politics.
