Before you listen to this BBC podcast, I'd like to quickly tell you about some others.

My name's Andy Martin and I'm the editor of a team of podcast producers at the BBC in Northern Ireland.

It's a job I really love because we get to tell the stories that really matter to people here,

but which also resonate and apply to listeners around the world.

And because the team has such a diverse

range of skills and strengths, we've trained journalists, people who love digging through archives,

we've got drama and even comedy experts. We really can do those stories justice. So if you like

this podcast, head to BBC Sounds where you'll find plenty more fascinating stories from all around the UK.

When I was five years old, my mother got a job as a school secretary in a school in Goring-on-Thames.

It was called Elmcroft School, a secondary school.

But part of her salary was devoted to my education.

And so there I was at the age of five, a little boy in the school.

The headmaster was an entirely eccentric man called Roland Birch, which is about as good a name

for a schoolmaster, I suppose, as you can get. And he had fought in the Spanish Civil War

on Franco's side, which was certainly original choice,

and was quite an authoritarian but so quirky that in a way he wasn't very frightening.

But the exciting thing in that school was the annual invasion of the Spanish

because every summer it became a summer school for young Spanish men

coming to study at Oxford or Cambridge University and who wanted to brush up their English.

So the whole school changed completely.

They brought a sort of entourage with them who would cook for them, Spanish food.

There was a cook called

...