The Great Escape

Memory Lane

Now I don't want to blacken My Dad's name, as he could be very kind and by the time my children had come along, he had mellowed into a lovely grandfather.

However, when I was a child, he could turn from being a very tolerant man to 'losing it altogether' and nothing in between. Yes.... he had a very short fuse.

One such occasion recently came to mind.

I was about eleven years old and my brother Godfrey was two and a half years younger.

I had adopted a small summer house at the bottom of the garden, where I played with my friend. One day, I had spent a long time stencilling pictures with paint onto paper and I was particularly pleased with the results and decided to decorate the little house with these masterpieces.

I probably wasn't the perfect sister and may well have provoked Godfrey in some way and as a result, he snatched the pictures down and ripped them up.

The Third World War broke loose. I screamed the place down and Dad, probably thinking I was being murdered, ran out to find what all the fuss was about.

Now one thing my Dad could not stand was wanton destruction and he turned on Godfrey to give him a 'thrashing' as he called it. This was very common when I was a child and parents could whack their children without getting arrested.

Godfrey knew what was coming and he was ready for it.

We lived in an end of terrace house and there was a wooden fence running the whole length of the garden. Godfrey had been blessed with long legs and he was a good sprinter. He jumped the fence no trouble at all and as he was built like a greyhound raced off over the wasteland that was on the other side of the fence.

Unfortunately my Dad was more of a bulldog in stature and although he managed to leap the fence, Godfrey was a dot on the horizon before he even started pursuing him.

After some time, my Dad came limping back, looking hot and sweaty and rather silly, I thought. He slunk into the house without saying anything and sat down to recover.

Godfrey knew from experience, that if he lay low for a couple of hours then the matter would be forgotten and that is exactly what happened....... only I didn't forget the incident.

The Tale Of The Two Bad Girls!

Memory Lane

There were once two rather naughty girls. 

When my friend Bella and I were around eleven years old, we were into secrets in a big way. We both decided that we wanted a secret pet even though we both already had a cat each and my family already had a spaniel dog. However, we wanted to keep a pet that no one else knew about. We decided on a couple of mice!

We planned our venture down to the last detail. I had a cardboard box and I made some air holes in it. I smuggled a piece of my brother's railway line out of his room and tied it into the box to make a little staircase for the mice to exercise on. We then put in a small dish of water and some seed for them to eat.

We collected our pocket money and went quite a long way to a pet shop taking a jam jar with us. It must have been a Saturday.

The man in the pet shop told us that there were two mice left. There was a white one, which I really wanted, and a brown one. Bella bagged the white one and I disappointedly accepted the brown one.

The pet shop man told us they were a shilling each! (five pence in todays money). He didn't ask us if we knew anything about keeping mice or if our parents had agreed. Nor did he say what sex the mice were.

He put the mice in the jam jar and off we set to Bella's home where the box was already in place in the spare bedroom.

We popped the new pets into their cardboard box and I left for home as Bella had to go down for tea.

The following Monday, my friend informed me that her mother was furious with me and was going to ring my mother that morning. Her cat had suddenly decided to frantically want to go into the spare bedroom and Bella's mother couldn't understand why and went to investigate.

The cat unfortunately killed my brown mouse and the white one had got into a chest of drawers and had peed on the clean bed linen and had started to chew things up. My friend's mother was really annoyed because they were expecting guests from America and they had got the room clean and now everything had to be washed from out of the chest of drawers.

I knew my mother would go over the top with punishing me. She always did, so I went home in great fear. I had thought of running away.

When I got home I was pounced on and my mother didn't let up from ranting and raving for hours.

All Bella got was a short lecture and she had to pay for a wooden mouse house with a glass front, from pocket money for the white mouse, which cost 12/6d. (About 61p) which was a lot of money to find in those days, for a child.

I felt sorry for myself for days afterwards because I hadn't wanted the brown mouse in the first place and now the cat had eaten it and it had cost me a shilling.  On top of this, Bella's mother told my Mum that I was a bad influence and I got into far more trouble than she did.

Bella eventually married an American man and has been living in USA for years. We still keep in touch though and occasionally laugh about the antics that we got up to as children.

 

My Early Schooling. (Memory Lane)

"Tell tale tit,

Your tongue shall be split

And every dog near this school

Shall have a little bit."

I was standing in the playground, mortified.

It wasn't another child saying this to me. It was a teacher!

I soon learned not to tell tales.

Although I cannot remember my first day at school, I do know that it was in September of 1947.

There was no gradual transition period, where parents stayed with children until they settled in. Mums would drop their children off at school and disappear fast. That was how it was then. Normal for that time.

The school was a Mixed Infant Church of England, with the local parish church standing next to it.

It was a stone building and the playground was tarmac with small white stones embedded in it.

Schools in those days were very strict and my older cousins had warned me in advance that the Headmaster, Mr Upward, had a cane that he used.

Being an anxious child by nature, I do not think that school was ever a pleasurable experience, nor did it ever boost my confidence, rather the opposite. However one of the teachers, Mrs Boardman, was very kind to me and used to take me under her wing. She taught me how to knit and sew and I remember that she was a slightly older motherly type of person.

Although my mum must have taken me on my first day at school, I can remember that my dad used to regularly take me on his large, black bike. It had a small saddle clipped onto the cross bar in front of him and two footrests anchored onto the front wheel frame. He used to drop me off at the school gate before turning round and heading to town and then work.

One day I took my feet off the foot rests, with disastrous results. I got my legs grazed by the spokes and Dad nearly fell off his bike. He was not too pleased and I went in to school with blooded legs, using Dad's hanky to mop up the mess.

Inside the classroom there were rows of wooden desks with seats, held together by a metal frame. Children had to remain seated at all times and there was to be no talking, which was difficult for me.

If a toilet trip was needed, we had to put up our hand and ask, 'Please may I be excused?' 

The toilet block was outside the main building, in the playground and there was a short trip across the tarmac to get there. The boys' toilets were on one side and the girls' was on the other. I can remember it was very cold during the winter.

If an unfortunate child wet their pants then the poor mite would be placed in a corner of the room, facing the wall. Even though this never happened to me, I noted that everyone laughed and made fun of all who did. There were no spare pants to change into, so the child just had to dry out naturally and was shunned by others.

There were many crazes at school, depending on whether you were a boy or a girl, as in those days there was a definite distinction between the sexes regarding, hobbies and play.

The girls collected beads and used to carry them around in tins, to swop or just to look at and show them off. The glass ones were highly desirable, with plastic being the least liked.

The boys collected cigarette cards  and unusual cigarette packets, and played marbles. They were encouraged to take part in sport activities and were taught simple woodwork.

Girls, on the other hand, were taught to knit and sew and later on, to cook.

Boys played football and cricket, while girls played hopscotch and skipping in the playground.

One of the rhymes, which is politically incorrect by today's standards, that we chanted while skipping was,

"My mother told me I never should

Play with the gypsies in the wood."

I cannot remember the rest which might be just as well. I would be interested to hear the ending, though, if there is some one out there who knew it.

I work in schools and find it so hard to imagine how today's children would have coped with the harsher conditions and discipline of the era of the post war days. Children today are more confident and have so many choices about everything. Maybe though, they are not so lucky as they don't have the freedom to go out on their own, as we did then. So maybe it is a question of swings and roundabouts!

My schooling was as different as chalk is from cheese!