At five I was photographed in my new school uniform: grey tunic, white blouse, red blazer, and a big red bow in my almost white, straight hair. In the picture I am leaning forward towards the camera, with a huge smile on my face. I have just skipped round and round the garden path, chanting ‘I’m going to school’.
All of this joy evaporated quickly when I discovered that in school you had to sit in rows in silence, doing sums. If you got them right, you moved forward in the row. If not you stayed at the back, conspicuous in your shame.
There were PE lessons, where you had to run and jump, and learn difficult games. I longed to sing in the choir, but was not chosen. In the Christmas play, I wanted to be an angel, or Mary, but instead got the part of the sick child. No doubt chosen for this because of my pallor, the dark rings under my eyes. My ‘costume’ was blue and white striped pyjamas and a dark red dressing gown. I felt ashamed again, appearing in front of the whole school in night attire. I only had one line, the last one in the play – ‘It’s the nicest Christmas tree I’ve ever seen’. I thought about the first Christmas I could remember, at my grandparents’ house, and I delivered the line in the loudest voice I could muster.
In my two-room village primary school there was no uniform (I was so excited when at age 10, Mary took me to be measured for my grammar school uniform). I was very proud of my own primary school desk which had a top that opened and where I kept my school work impeccably tidy! My home was one of the very few in our village where reading was important – numbers never achieved equal status at home or school!
Dans un spectacle de noël, j’avais alors environ 5 ans, je devais jouer le berger de la crèche.
la consigne de la metteuse en scène : “parler très fort”.
Je devais annoncer au monde que le sauveur était arrivé. Une courte réplique aussi : “réveillez vous” que je hurlai.
Je restai confus devant l’éclat de rire général que j’eus un peu de mal à interpréter.
La scène me plaît bien Louis! Je te vois bien en berger! Et c’est la version catholique de la chose – je ne crois pas qu’on ait mentionné le sauveur dans la nôtre!
Does anyone else remember ‘ready reckoners’? They were an incredibly primitive analogue calculator. Each child made their own. You ended up with twelve strips of cardboard pinned together at one end so that they could be fanned out, and they gave the answer to every possible times table sum.
I don’t remember these Karen, but I would have found them very useful!
I don’t know whether it was a standard thing or something my teacher came up with.
My first Christmas tree I ever remember was later when we moved to the next house/home..shortly after the Coronation November 1953. We exchanged with a family . They gave up their newly built council house only 6 months in as Bushbury suited them for family reasons and Castlecroft suited us for the same reasons. The tree would stand proudly on the table in our front room and if you walked along the street you would see all the others lit up. My mom would buy loads of Christmas chocolates and sweets and sugar mice…and put cotton balls on it and silver threads…so many decorations across the ceiling but after Christmas 1954 as I had now turned 5 it was a school uniform for me also. Home made on her sewing machine.
Cotton wool ‘snow’, silver threads, paper chains across the ceiling and sugar mice – yes, that was definitely Christmas in those days!
Thanks for writing such an eare-to-undysstand article on this topic.