Recollections of Primary School.  I am an April birthday so started school full time at 4 1/2.  Teacher gives all of us a card with our names printed on it, which we have to copy.  I remember saying "I don't need this, I can read and write already"  I imagine in the staff room there would have been a comment along the lines of "Well, we've got a real smartarse in Form 1"

Humiliating moments.  I went home for lunch (lived 5 mins round the corner)  I returned, having done some colouring at home and having transferred the red crayon to my face which Mother evidently hadn't noticed, I also had changed into my slippers at home but not to shoes for the return journey.  Consequence:  Lining up for afternoon roll call with red smeared cheeks and my Noddy slippers (with bells) and the whole school erupted and cried "Oh, a clown has joined us" the mocking laughter was horrible.

Guilty moments.  First day.  Mid-morning break.  Teacher says have your snack.  Oh Goody, thinks I and grabs a package from the alcove as the other children are doing.  Hmm!  Jammy Dodgers.  Next I hear little James is bewailing the fact that the neatly wrapped snack his Mum gave him that morning has gone!  I never confessed.  I am haunted to this day with guilt.  Personally I blame my Mother.

Britten was known as Ben to everyone who knew him - not in concert programmes though. I was rather shocked when I discovered that the name Benjamin (a lovely name, I think) was abbreviated. Auden called him "Benjy".

First names in my school, but then we were girls, who for some reason were always treated much better than boys were.

There is something quite poetic about this thread: it is one that a) I started, and b) I didn't start! The said initial posting was one that I placed on the "Meeting Life's Challenges" thread, but it was from there severed by our Moderators and placed at the head of a quite different thread with a title I should never have thought of.

But the poetry is this: my memories of "School" consist of a) being given "made-up" written reports that bore little if any causal connection with reality or me, b) constantly being shifted to different groups for no apparently good reason, c) being entered for examinations that I was expected to Fail only then to Pass them, d) being supplied with references from the Headmaster with a clearly forged signature (albeit a clever fake in each case) on account of the Headmaster's absence, and e) forgetting 90% of everything I had revised within one hour of the termination of each examination.

They still used blackboards though, and I was the chief architect of what became a quite common hoax: I bored out the end of a piece of chalk with a small pen-knife, and placed inside the hole the end of a live match, then carefully infilling the end with chalk dust. This proved extremely effective when the Maths teacher entered the room and started drawing graph lines upon the blackboard. As the chalk ignited, and the teacher dropped it in astonishment, he received a round of applause.

I wish my memories of school were happier ones, but they were not to be so unfortunately, because I was a REBEL!

Baz

Is this what you mean tinners?


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A