10 Chips and Tyne-brand tinned stewed steak with heaps of mint sauce and tinned peas
9 Bovril crisps dipped in tea or tomato soup
8 Ham on over-buttered floured baps from Greggs the bakers
7 Tinned toms and bacon with as many rounds of white bread and butter as it will stretch to—minimum five
6 Soggy tinned salmon sandwiches on white bread with white pepper and too much vinegar, hence the ‘soggy’
5 Meat and potato pie sandwiches with ketchup—making my mouth water now as I think about them
4 Beans on toast, plain and simple, no poncey Worcestershire sauce or anything lke that
3 Fish, chips and gravy—gravy on chips (it’s a Northern thing)
2 Dad’s gravy dip chip butties—sublime
1 Mum’s hotpot from the war, again, with added miracle margarine pastry*—there is no better thing to put in your mouth on planet Earth
When you’re a kid, there are hierarchies and lowerarchies (a word that doesn’t exist but common sense says it should) springing up everywhere you look. Who’s hanging out with whom in the sandpit? Who’s always at the top of the climbing frame? Who’s on their own in the corner of the playground?
The argument that all this is a good idea, I suppose, is that these are the situations that will help prepare children for similar environments they may encounter when they are re-released into the free world. Well, how about the fact that the future adult environments may only exist because of the creation of former childhood ones? Sure, it may have always been thus in the past, in caveman times, but shouldn’t we be doing something to change that now instead of perpetuating them—at least honour the worst kids with something if only to stop the tears. Awards for one, awards for all, that’s what I say. We’re all good at something; it’s up to the schools to prise out of us what that may be.
My infant/junior school was St Margaret’s—absolutely run of the mill. Old Victorian classrooms complete with ornate, rain-echoing verandas somehow linked clumsily to a new unimaginative square concrete building that looked like it had fallen out of the sky and landed there by mistake.
From the off we had the good teachers and the bad teachers as most schools do, those that could and those that could not when it came to communicating. There was Mrs Clark, the old Ena Sharples battleaxe type who would scare the living daylights out of us—although I can’t remember exactly how. There was the glamorous Mrs Johnson who looked like she should have been on one of those ever so slightly risqué Top of The Pops album covers and there was Mrs Smith who always reminded me of Virginia Wade for some reason. But my favourite was a supply teacher we had called Mr Hillditch. He was born to teach and took us to the Robinson’s bread factory one afternoon where he used to work. When his two weeks of deputising came to an end I remember being genuinely sad that he was leaving. I even wrote him a song and stood up in class to sing it to him.
Mr Hilditch we think that thee Is no good at being referee.
The only thing you’re good at is baking bread Also we’d like to thank you For giving us such a lot to do Mr Hillditch we love you And good bye.
(I was also pretty pleased with the tune I came up with for this ditty—on the audio book I will give it plenty, don’t you worry.)
During breaks it was conkers, the climbing frame, a game of footy, or British bulldog, or you could, if you wanted, while away the hours clinging to the school fence, pretending to be a prisoner, dreaming of freedom and rueing the crime that put you inside. I did this quite a lot.
Prizegiving was one of the few highlights, as was sports day, mostly because it meant no lessons. Rarely did I feature in either of these annual events—from the first year it was obvious which three or four kids would rule the roost in both categories and after that the rest of us were demoted to mere bit-part players in the predictable soap opera of typical primary school education.
*This is a magic pastry that takes 15 minutes from bagged to baked, all brown and crusty. None of this resting it in the fridge for four hours wrapped in cellophane nonsense. Again, any attempt by me to get the recipe for this fell on conveniently deaf ears.
Top 10 First Memories of Going to School (#ulink_dd191c8e-e337-5d43-b485-8383670c96cb)
10 First desk
9 First school friend
8 First sports team not selected for
7 First hardest kid
6 First sportiest kid
5 First weird kid
4 First smelly kid
3 First mean teacher
2 First test
1 First exam
One of the unavoidable dividers in school (there are many, most of them unfair and upsetting) is the school test—you know, marks out of twenty. I always did OK in these but imagine if you were one of the kids who couldn’t get out of single figures—poor souls. And then the teacher reads out all the results, just in case anyone might not quite have grasped just how dense you are.
Tests were bad enough but then along came another phenomenon—the ‘exam’. Exactly when does a test become an exam? They must be different, I suppose, because they have different names. The thing is, for the first few years nobody tells you—or even gives you warning of their existence. You spend years having tests, spelling tests, maths tests, all sorts of tests and then one day the teacher says, ‘And in a few weeks’ time you will be having your first exam.’
Exam! Hang on a minute, what are you talking about exam? What the blinkin’ bloomin’ whatsit is an exam? Whatever it is, it sounds scary and it must be—otherwise why are we being warned about it several ‘weeks’ in advance like the potential of a nuclear strike? Kids don’t do several weeks in advance. I remember thinking, ‘Crikey, this must be really something.’
Even the word exam sounds big and dangerous. Test is a far more flighty word, a far more friendly word—test is light and trips off the tongue. Whereas exam is a deep and heavy word, its gravitas forcing your voice to go down when you say it: EX—AM.
It’s a word that resonates in your head, like the hammer clanging in a bell—E X A M A A M A M A M A M.
‘This is not a test, it’s an exam!’
This phrase brought on another first for me—nerves. Early childhood is relatively free of nerves. What is there to be nervous about? Your job is to be a kid, no problem there, all you have to do is get up every morning, be fairly well behaved and go to bed again the next night. Nerves, I have deduced, all have one thing in common, they are generally brought on by ‘expectation’.
Ah now, expectation, a dreaded thing if ever there was one. Expectation—similar to exams—suddenly turns up on the scene out of nowhere, coming into play and throwing up a whole host of other factors that previously did not exist. Expectation for me was a direct result of the past performances of my elder brother and sister—David and Diane. They were both pretty much top of the class, especially my big sis; I was from the same family and therefore I would be ‘expected’ to continue this tradition of achievement.
All the above could be encapsulated in the ominous…
ELEVEN PLUS ENTRANCE EXAM(dramatic music here)
Fortunately I passed my Eleven Plus with flying colours, which meant for now at least I had fulfilled my expectations: I had overcome my peer pressure, avoided any kind of judgement that might have befallen me and in the process unknowingly scratched the first hairs on the back of those troublesome beasts that go by the names of pride and ego.
As a result of my recent success I was now qualified and officially brainy enough to attend the grandest of all grammar schools for the duration of the next five long years—or at least that’s what was supposed to happen.
I was happy to accept the fact that it was now time to hop on the bus with the big boys, but not before Karen with the big boobies had taken me and a few other pals over to the park for a final farewell and a benevolent insight into why those big boys from the senior schools were already knocking on her door.
Why is it some people are just set apart right from the start? Karen was in a different class to the rest of the girls—not literally, of course, but generally, she was the first girl of my age to show any signs of sexiness and everyone knew it. All the girls wanted to be in her gang and all the boys just wanted to be…well, you know. But Karen didn’t have a gang—she was a one-woman show and the only audience she was interested in was that of the male species. She was confidence personified. Even those girls who claimed not to be intrigued by Karen’s ‘powers’ had to admit they wanted to know what it was like to be her and to know what she knew, which, compared to the rest of us, was pretty much everything.
I remember seeing Karen a few years later when she couldn’t have been more than fifteen. She looked like a bloody supermodel. I have no idea what’s happened to her since but I hope she’s happy. She certainly deserves to be—goodness knows she spread enough happiness around herself.
Top 10 Weird Things about Teachers from a Kid’s Point of View (#ulink_4c587cb6-ef96-5962-88b3-b85cd9a4d399)
10 Their names
9 Their hair
8 Their clothes