I went for a morning walk today – it was sunny and Spring-like and perhaps something drew me on a certain path because after roughly 5762 steps I stopped at a railway crossing and when I looked to my left, before I’d even completed the thought I shouted over “Mr Tracey?” and the guy looked towards me and smiled. It was my old Head of Sixth Form who I’ve not seen for 32 years - we had a great chat while waiting for the trains to go by, though it’s tough to condense such a passage of time into a less than five minute exchange. It reminded me that I’ve been meaning to share some thoughts and memories of my childhood with you. So away we go …
A fun fact from my 1970’s English childhood to set the scene – home furnishing as well as underwear was mainly available in shades of brown, cream or avocado and in the case of underwear always in very loose, baggy material for maximum sag to cause all manner of embarrassment should you ever forget or misplace your PE kit at school. Fortunately we didn’t have mobile phone cameras, so the experience left only mild psychological scarring with no permanent digital reminder of the shaming.
I have generally very fond memories of primary school which I attended between 1974 and 1980 in a small Northumbrian town. The town was Bedlington Station, a remnant of the old pit communities, with a railway station running through it delivering coal up the road to the power station. It was economically, ideologically and culturally a million miles away from Newcastle-upon-Tyne which with all its big-city glamour was a mere 13 miles geographically.
I only ever forgot my PE kit once at primary school so the policy of making forgetful pupils run around in front of all their peers in baggy brown undergarments must have been effective. The highly respected Headmistress of the school was of an indiscriminate age in the range of 37 to 60 and was super dedicated to her job. She knew every single pupil by name on sight and what they were up to at any given time. With her knitted cardigan, floral dress of sturdy material, immobile steel grey wash and set and wispy facial hair she was an ideal figurehead for our school, kindly, wise and tough as old boots when necessary. Our Headmistress led us in The Lord’s Prayer regularly and at the end of each school day we sang without much care for melody an inspiring number that went along the lines of “Now the Day is Over, Night is Drawing Nigh, Shadows of the Evening steal across the sky”.
The other revered position in addition to Headmistress was Bell-ringer – a pupil selected to wield the huge metal school bell along the corridors and ring out the glorious signal of the beginning and end of school plus break times. I never made it into that special role but looked on with great admiration at all who did. A few memories remain quite vivid from primary school – the singularly odd smell of the full-cream milk we were served up daily at break-time, laminated toilet paper, the beautiful sponge pudding and radioactive bright pink custard dishes of school dinners, being let loose on exotic musical instruments like the Guiro and the Indian Bells in music lessons, wearing big plastic tabards and painting on easels like mini-Van-Goghs, weekly spelling tests and learning tapestry – a very useful skill it has to be said if quaintly medieval.
I only remember being told off once, in an assembly when I decided it would be more fun to tickle the person sat next to me than to listen to the drone of the voice leading the assembly – no doubt warning us of the dangers of talking to strangers, crossing the road without the aid of Darth Vader or flying a kite near an electricity pylon. Those were the key threats to a peaceful life in the 1970’s in Northumberland. I was sent to the Headmistress’ office for that transgression and cried hot tears of shame, then proceeded to clutch my abdomen as if I had a life-threatening medical emergency in my stomach. I’ve never liked getting told off, which has mainly (but not always) kept me on the right side of things since. More of that in the next instalment which will cover recorders, home-fashions and a near tragedy in the family …..
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