My first day at school was September 1944. I still had my ‘chill-proof’ vest on, and a liberty bodice because it was cold. Mum walked me to school, a good long walk with my brother in a push chair. I wore a grey wool pleated skirt and a sweater mum had made. I had no uniform for this school, but I had briefly been sent to a private kindergarten a year before; there I wore a boater and a gym-slip, and learned how to draw and write my name before I was five. All that with a pen with a nib, and ink you dipped in.
Then the money ran out and I was reluctantly taken out of the school. I liked the teachers at the kindergarten as I could use paint and get messy and sing songs. Real school was a shock, and that first day is etched in my memory.
Mum left me and I wasn’t crying but felt a bit scared. I was shown my high wooden desk and told to sit down, no mollycoddling from a teacher, or a trial period to get used to it. So imagine how I felt when the desk in front of me was whacked with a ruler, and then the teacher did the same to mine. Her brutish voice and tweed skirt said it all, and even worse, her name, which I never forgot. Miss Fear was the worst sort of maiden lady.
Her method was to scare the hell out of us the first day. I must have gone into a sort of trance, because I remember very little of those early years. The school was a solid grey Victorian building, and I recall the walk over the railway bridge, and getting apples from a farm on the way to school for a penny, or buying liquorice root to chew on from the sweet shop. Yet, I can’t recall how I was taught, or who I played with.
By the time I was eight we had moved house and I went to a city school. There I was bullied until I retaliated and hit the boy in the face. Even shy girls have to learn to fight back.
Each Friday, when Mum shopped I had lunchtimes with my Gran, another tough cookie who took no nonsense. She shouted a lot and didn’t smile much. We always had fish, which my lovely grandad who I adored called ‘toe rag’. I think it was a dried fish that was soaked – I just hope it wasn’t whale meat.
School dinners in wartime, and even just after the war were pretty foul. But luckily I was a hungry child and ate most things. I especially liked steamed puddings, tapioca and rice. The dinner ladies came round with seconds sometimes, and I loved the synthetic yellow custard. I suspect we had dried eggs still in some meals, and a lot of spam. I was more reluctant to eat the strange fish, and now I am glad, as it was horrible. Before school we lined up and Mum gave us a spoonful of Cod liver oil with some orange juice in the spoon, and a big spoon of Virol, which was a malted supplement like treacle. I loved that.
This was to make us healthy, and make up for any vitamins we missed due to war. We got little bottles of concentrated orange juice from the ministry of food, and like the milk at school this was free. We also had something called Scott’s Emulsion, and had to be given Syrup of Figs for our inner workings! Children today would curl up and die if you tried to force that down them now.
We did all the usual things, recited the times tables, and learned to spell, and to write in nice handwriting with a pen and ink. We had history crammed down our throats and were told how wonderful Winston Churchill was. For sport we played hockey and rounders, which I hated.
The one thing I gleaned from those years was that I loved words, loved books, and dreamed of writing. I also learned I was an untidy little girl, and I often had blots and crossing out on my pages. Yet my best teacher, the one I loved, looked past the messy pages and told me to ‘keep writing’.
Thank you Miss Griffiths, I eventually took your advice.