Wednesday 15th January

I don’t remember school dinners at Junior School; maybe I went home – I cannot remember.  I definitely never had packed lunches.  But when I went up to Grammar School I was introduced to the ritual of school dinners.  We were somehow allocated to tables of eight, with benches running down the sides.  Each table was ‘run’ by a sixth former, usually a prefect, and there would be at least one student from each year around the table.  Girls and boys were segregated, girls in the Upper Hall and boys in the lower.  Every so often a teacher would join our table and a chair would be provided at the end for him.

The food was collected by the most junior member of the table.  At a small hand signal from Sam Chivers (deputy head and a right tartar) we minions would run as fast as possible and form a (dis) orderly queue.  At the food hatch we would be handed a large stainless steel tray with our lunch on it.  Square stainless steel containers, with whatever the meat was, potatoes and usually boiled cabbage or carrots.  The table head would then dole out the food, in roughly equal proportions.  But the role of the ‘runner’ was far from over.  He had to quick as possible eat his food and be sitting ready and watching Sam Chivers who would surreptiously give the signal for ‘seconds’.  And again we would run and try to get one of the limited supply of second helpings.

As soon as the plates and cutlery and empty dishes were cleared away it was the same system for ‘afters’.  Chocolate concrete, or sponge pudding, jam roly-poly pudding, plum duff and oodles of thick yellow custard; ‘afters’ were definitely the best.

As the years rolled on I stopped being the runner and would berate the next little twerp for being so tardy in his duties.

I can never remember going hungry, we had big portions, and even bigger appetites as I remember.  But as in all of life back then the concept of choice was absent; now kids pick and choose and refuse to eat their greens and only want chicken nuggets and chips.  We always ate whatever was put in front of us.  The idea of not liking something simply never entered our heads.  Happy days indeed.