Wednesday 14th October

Well, there were no nurseries – at least not for us council house kids; it was straight from the safety and security of home and into the classroom.  And I don’t remember any toys there either.  On Friday after lunch we were allowed to play, but I think this was mostly painting and teacher reading us a story.  Painting, we had big sweet-jar sized pots of basic colours.  This was a dry pigment which had to be added to water, bright blue, red, green and yellow.  We also had glue, ‘cow paste’, a thick unctuous brown stuff and were encouraged to attach old toilet rolls (harsh Izal paper not soft Andrex, of course) and bits of cardboard to our creations.  I don’t remember my mother ever sticking them on the fridge though, maybe because we didn’t have a fridge…hahaha.

We were taught to write by copying our letters in big exercise books.  We learned our times tables by rote, but only up to twelve.  Long multiplication and division, which I can still do, were de rigeur.  And Mental Arithmetic, a lost art in the age of calculators was practised; questions being fired at you at random, and a sharp rap across the knuckles if you got it wrong, or even worse hesitated.  My Mum walked me to school for the first few days, but I soon dispatched her and proudly walked all the way home, something parents would never let a five-year old do now.

One incident I can remember and looking back now it was terrible, but at the time the whole class roared with laughter.  There was one family, I think they were the Meekins, who were desperately poor and I suspect had mental issues too.  One day Mrs. Drinkwater, a particularly nasty teacher made one of the Meekins boys who was in my class stand at the front for some misdemeanor.  He had a runny nose, and the snot was dripping down his chin and she just laughed because he had no hanky (I imagine the concept of a hanky was missing in his home).  He stood there crying and his tears and the snot dripped constantly from his chin.  It makes me ashamed now to think how cruel we were, but any disability was fair game for the playground to pick on; one boy had to wear leg braces after a bout of polio, and we used to try to steal them so he couldn’t walk.  Again, one of the Meekins boys had a streak of shit behind his knees one day and we all thought this was great fun to point out.  One or two kids had to wear glasses and we had no hesitation in labelling them four-eyes.

So, it wasn’t all fun.  I can remember being so bored in class I would actually fall asleep.  I started off being the boy who knew all the answers, and would stick my hand up first.  But the teachers soon tired of my excellence and insisted on others answering, I got fed up and decided that if they didn’t want to know the answer then I wouldn’t tell them.  Possibly my first act of rebellion; and certainly not my last.