Memories of the 1960’s – school days

Finally the day had come for me to go to school. There were special clothes, a grey skirt, white shirt and bottle green cardigan Mother had knitted, along with white ankle socks. Everything felt scratchy and new, not at all like the cotton dresses I’d been wearing. With the help of Tiny Dyer, a giant policeman wearing his tall black helmet to make him seem even bigger, we crossed the Main Road a little way down from our house along with a stream of other children I didn’t know. Amongst them was Libby, the girl with the curly blonde hair who lived on the corner at the top of The Crescent, tantalisingly close but too far away to play with. Everyone was wearing the same green jumpers and grey skirts or trousers.

On the other side of the road we walked back up in the direction we’d come, to the railings that led down into one of the side streets. This was a place I’d never been before. Down the ramp we went to the top of a gentle hill. Mother let go of my hand and I skipped ahead, half excited to be somewhere new, half scared. Then disaster struck. I fell. My knee was scraped and bleeding, a little stone from the pavement stuck in the grazed skin. The sight of blood had me crying.

Just then a gate in a tall wall opened and another little girl in the same green cardigan and grey skirt but with short dark hair came out followed by her mother. Seeing me sitting on the pavement bawling with blood running down my leg the other mother went inside and got some cotton wool and disinfectant to clean me up. With a plaster on my knee and still sobbing a little, we went on. To this day I have a small, round, dimpled scar on my left knee where the stone lodged, a permanent reminder of my first day at school.

The entrance to the school was a steep grassy hill with a path curving up it. Rounding a bend at the top we entered a large round playground with a circular wall and a tall tree in the centre. On one side, the playground ended in steep grass banks with long, low classrooms at the top. The other side was bordered by woods.

The little dark haired girl whose mother had put a plaster on my knee was called Jennie and it turned out she would be in the same class as me. Together we climbed some steps up the grassy bank and entered a classroom. There must have been a teacher and other children but I don’t remember them. The one thing that sticks in my mind was a rocking horse, made of wood and painted white with a mane of long hair. It captivated me and I ran across the room to claim it. Until that moment I’d been afraid of Mother leaving me but, when it came to it, I didn’t even see her go. The only thing I remember about my first day in a classroom was sitting on the rocking horse.

Those early school days all run together in my mind now as little snippets of memories. There was painting at wooden easels with aprons, pots of bright paint and long, thick brushes. The way the colours mixed fascinated me and I’d paint big splotches of blue and dot them with red while the blue was still wet to see stars of red turn to purple as they spread. We played counting games with coloured bean bags, small, soft hoops and shiny speckled cowrie shells. There was a dressing up box and a playhouse in the corner with a tiny sink and wooden blocks with numbers on them. We learned new songs, Glad That I Live Am I and All Things Bright and Beautiful.

At break time we were allowed to go outside and run around the playground. There were stern warnings about not going into the woods. No one told us what would happen if we did, there were no stories of nasty men or bears so, of course, Jennie and I would stand on the very edge of the playground and daringly put one foot onto the grass, feeling very naughty. Occasionally, really naughty boys would dash behind a tree and dash back out. Sometimes there’d be cries of, “Miss, Miss, Geoffrey went into the woods,” others we’d all keep quiet. In the playground I’d see Annie, the girl with the Wendy house and the horse called Bunty, and Libby, the girl from The Crescent, but they weren’t in my class so Jennie and I became best friends.

These days, although the woods are still there, there are high chain fences in them surrounding the school and the teachers have created a nature trail. Back then you could walk through Hum Hole, right into the school grounds. In fact, when Alex occasionally took me to school, we would walk up the hill to cross the road and go down through Hum Hole into the playground. Why she took me that way is a mystery. Perhaps she wanted to avoid Tiny, who had a reputation for clipping naughty children round the ear, or maybe she just liked walking in the woods.  Hum Hole was a very different place then, no paved paths or pond with benches and much bigger and wilder. When the bypass cut through it took the top part of the woods and the bomb site halfway up the hill and today there are street lights and signs to warn the path is slippery when wet.

At lunchtime, Pappy would come to get me. He’d wait on the corner opposite the school and take me home to feed me boiled egg with soldiers or toast with marmite. The radio would be on but it was always too early for the familiar “Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin,” of Listen With Mother and the stories that followed. Afterwards he’d see me back across the Main Road to the school gates. Some children stayed at school for lunch but I never did.

Of all the things we did at school, my favourite was learning to read from small board backed books about a girl called Janet and a Boy called John. Some of the children struggled to decipher the squiggles that were really words but I wanted to understand them so badly I sailed through those books. At the end of each day we’d all sit, cross legged on the floor in a circle around the teacher while she read us a story. All summer I’d been worried about school but, once I was there I found I loved it.