In the 50’s there was no such thing as preschool, at 5 years old you started and it was full days from the first day. Mum dressed me in grey short trousers , a white shirt, grey sleeveless V neck pullover and off we went. We walked down through the village with the twins in their pram and me along side, brand new clothes looking really smart, all my mates of the same age went too plus all the bigger kids, they didn’t have to have their mums with them. Mum stopped at the school gate and said with a tear in her eye “on you go now I will see you when it’s time to come home.” I looked across the playground at all these kids I did not know, playing football, british bulldog or off ground tick and never felt so alone as I did then. Tears started to form and I could feel my bottom lip trembling. I didn’t want to go to school. Then this lady teacher came over and took my hand, she was really pretty and she said “Come on Stephen, I will look after you”. I was in love with Miss Bell from that moment on. She later got married and became Mrs Money. All went well on that first day, I was oldest in the class and got the important job of being milk monitor, I had to hand out the little bottles of milk and the wax paper straws at break time. Collecting the metal tops was important too as they were sent away to pay for blind dogs, that is dogs for blind people not as I thought at first dogs with no sight. I thought it was really kind to provide homes with people for these dogs that could not see.
We had a sand pit in the class and much fun was had making sand castles with a plastic bucket and spade. I had never been to a beach and had only seen the sea in picture books.
St John’s school was divided into two halves and a wall ran down the middle of the playground splitting us infants from the juniors. Sometimes we would hear shouting from the other side and we would jump up and hang onto the top of the wall to see what the fuss was about, usually two big boys were fighting. It was hard to keep hold as the top was a coping stone of glazed pot which came to a ridge all along. If you could jump high enough you could get your elbows over and hang on, if you were really nimble you could get and sit on top but that would bring a teacher running as it was four feet tall and too dangerous for us little ones to climb on.
One day Keith my mate was hanging on the wall and I saw the teacher coming so I grabbed his shorts and pulled to get him down before he got told off. He wasn’t very pleased when his shorts came right down to his ankles, I didn’t know he had an elastic waist and not buttons like mine. All the girls came round and were laughing at him. He fell out with me and didn’t speak to me ever again. When I was about 8 and in the juniors, there was one boy in my class who was a real bully he was Michael, he was mad keen on football and supported Everton. He thumped me a few times for no reason and he like to play tricks on one of the boys Jonny. Jonny was a nice lad but today he would be classed as a child with learning difficulties. He nodded as he walked and couldn’t read very well. He may have had some form of brain damage. I think he had fallen out of his bedroom window and landed on his head. One day soon after Shrove Tuesday, Michael turned up with a plastic Jif lemon, they were new on the market and could be used as water pistols when they were filled with water. Any way he decided to play a trick on Jonny and filled it up with urine instead of water. He gave it to Jonny and told him he could have a drink from his lemon, he was nearly sick when he tasted it. I felt really sorry for him and took him to the toilets for a drink from the fountain to wash his mouth out. We couldn’t say anything to the teachers or we would have been beaten up.
School meals were delivered to the school in great big tin boxes and were served in a big wooden hut at the back of the school. Things I could not recognise were served to us on long trestle tables by the dinner ladies, who I later found out were some of the kids mums earning money part time, you could see who were their kids as they all got bigger portions than the rest of us. During the summer it was endless salads with grated carrots, a blob of mashed potato and corned beef or lunch tongue. In the winter it was stews or steamed fish fingers, mashed potato and tinned tomatoes. I have hated liver and onions ever since, it tasted like powder and was greasy at the time. My favourite was the chocolate sponge pudding served with pink custard, when the pink custard went cold I am sure they called blancmange. Rice pudding was a favourite and frog spawn (Sago) with jam, you could stir it and make pink streaks in your bowl. We were never allowed salt cellars on the table after someone unscrewed the top one day and a little girl got the whole shaker in her Irish stew.
Around the back of the school ran the Burscough junction railway line which linked the Liverpool to Preston line with the Wigan to Southport line. Trains used this line to swap over and it was a great sight to see the giant steam trains huffing and puffing along with giant clouds of steam and smoke. We all ran to the back fence to see them and wave to the engineers, we lads all wanted to be train drivers when we grew up. Standing up front of that powerful machine with all those people behind on their way to the seaside at Southport. He would wave to us and we would wave back worshiping our hero. He looked like a panda with soot all over his face and we thought he was great because he was able to get so dirty and everyone still loved him. If we got that dirty Mum would at least tell us off and he could get away with it. Once during a really hot dry spell the train went by and dropped the hot ash from the boiler on the track at the back of the school. This was so hot it set fire to the weeds and grass on the banking, the school was covered in smoke and we had to evacuate to the school field. It was so exciting when the fire engines turned up about 30 mins later all the way from Ormskirk. They spent all morning beating the fire out with long sticks with rubber beaters on them. We all thought we would get sent home but no such luck, the fire was out and we went back into school to finish the day.
No comments:
Post a Comment