1944 - 1950 Primary Schooling ......................

Hard to believe, but I may have actually started school during the Second World War. As today, school start depended a lot on where your birthday falls in the year. 'Tis said I started before my fifth birthday.

Seemingly school spaces were in short supply so my mother's being in the WAAF was used as a way of getting me into a school for Army children. Hence Marlborough Lines School. The very title smacks of Army. Presumably the nearby 'married' accomodation for soldiers' families were known as Marlborough Lines. I think "lines" comes from the lines of tents that an army would use as accomodation in days of yore. But the above 'accomodation' was pretty rugged as remember it when I visited other kids' homes. Sadly reminiscent, come to think of it, of pictures you see of slum tenements.

We lived a long walk (for a small boy) away, but walk it I did, there and back in the morning, there and back in the afternoon. Given that the bulk of the kids were presumably from army non-commisioned ranks I probably lived in much better surroundings than most of them. 29 Alexandra Road would have been considered very posh by my school chums if they'd visited.

A time-scattered series memories, focused on the school:

1.
Primary school lasted until you passed or failed your "Eleven Plus Exam". This happened, as might be expected, at age eleven and will serve as 'another story'.

2. The Yanks. A Christmas(?) party. This hovers on the fringe of my memory and may have nothing to do with school but a I remember a crowded hall and food and Father Christmas and know somehow that this was given for us kids by American GIs. 1944 or 45? Who knows?

3. Caning. I remember being caned on the hands and the backside on different occasions. It hurts! It's great a deterrant and it seems to me the passing of corporal pushment is a sad thing.

4. Ink. We actually used pens with wooden handles and nibs that were inserted in the end! The ink was mixed, powder with water, and dispensed into inkwells that fitted into holes in the right hand corner of our desks. I remember the mixing of that ink.

5. This was immediate-post-war England. The first five post-war years. Paper was in short supply and I remember doing my homework in 'rough' on opened-out, used envelopes because of that shortage.

6. School milk. Oh the horror of that. I hated milk and it made me sick when I drank it so I was excused 'school milk'. But I remember everybody had a bottle of milk during the morning break. Glass bottles with carboard tops - discs that fitted into the top of the bottle, later replaced by aluminium foil caps. We valued those caps highly - a passionately played game involved flicking the caps against a wall, the nearest cap winning the rest. A simpler life!

7. The toilets were across the playground from the school and pretty much open to the skies. A common wall divided 'girls' from 'boys' and we lads would compete to see who could pee highest up that wall. Some powerfully bladdered individuals could pee over it!!!!!! Much to the awe and delight of the other competitors and the disgust of the unfortunate girl recipients.

8. Obviously from the above, this was a mixed school. When I moved onto Grammar School at eleven I effectively lost sight of girls for the next six years - no wonder the English were so screwed up in my day.

9. Surprisingly, the boys (and girls presumably) did "needlework of a sort", in that school at least. I made an egg cosy and a duck-adorned shopping bag.

10. I remember a schoolfriend called Eric Noble falling out of a tree, almost at my feet and breaking his wrist. He'd been up there knocking down conkers. Eric was dark skinned, probably of mixed English and Indian parentage. His was probably the only dark face I'd ever seen until I moved to London.

11. It was a time of boyhood clumsiness and skinned knees. Running everywhere I be forever falling. I seemed to always have scabs on my knees. Year-round, short-pants wearing didn't help.

12. Was I happy at that school? I don't really remember. Happier perhaps than at the next. School was stricter back then and I don't think you were supposed to enjoy it. You simply "went".