School’s Out – Hooray!
My very first day at St. Peter’s Church of England Primary School went something like this: I woke up and the tears started immediately. I got dressed, had breakfast and walked to school with tears streaming down my face and holding Mum’s hand so tightly my fingers were white. Nothing she said could pacify me.
I knew she was upset that her ‘baby,’ the youngest of her four daughters, was now five-years-old and she didn’t want to let me go. I played on it, but the teacher, whose name has long escaped my memory, was insistent that I’d be fine once I was settled into my classroom along with the other ‘newbies.’
After wiping my tears away with her crisp, white handkerchief, she turned and went on her way.
“Come along, Lynda, you’ll be fine,” the teacher told me, but I knew different. She led me into the classroom and still I was crying. In fact, I was in such a state they had to get my sister, Carol, who was in Juniors, to come and try to comfort me. She failed.
I’ll always remember sitting on a small, uncomfortable, hard wooden chair, around a wooden table, with the other kids looking at me wondering what I was making such a fuss about. We all had a plain piece of paper in front of us, with a tin of coloured pencils placed in the middle of the table.
“Let’s all draw a picture and colour it in!” The teacher was enthusiastic. It was the first day of term, the very first step on the long road of our education journey. But I was having none of it. My tears had fallen on the paper and it was sodden.
I can’t remember much else about that day way back in 1968, but just recalling it, 56 years later, gives me shivers.
Throughout my school days, I don’t think there was a time I was truly happy to be in a classroom, in a uniform, behind those iron, prison-like gates. There were some positives, like the Ladybird books, English lessons and the Summer holidays! The negatives included the nit nurse, assembly, swimming lessons and needlework. During my primary school years mum worked in a newsagent and dad was a long-distance lorry driver. I knew mum was a soft-touch; I only had to mention that I had a sore throat for her to let me have the day off from school. One day invariably turned into two, then three, then mum would say “you might as well wait and go back next Monday,” so I wasn’t going to argue with that!
This happened quite frequently, then eventually she started to get visits from the dreaded ‘School Board Woman.’ She wasn’t an imposing figure, but she sure scared the life out of me. I’ll never forget her; oval-shaped glasses with red hair and a navy-blue raincoat. My poor mum received quite a few warnings from her; my dad was oblivious to it all.
It was only mum who went to the open evenings, attended the nativity play at Christmas, made up the food parcel for Harvest Festival and took me to school, even meeting me at lunchtimes so I didn’t have to suffer staying for school dinners.
She was there to meet me too and always bought me a lolly from the ice cream van parked outside the school gates; either a strawberry split or a funny face, that I’d enjoy on the way home, so thankful that another day was over and I could go and play my 45rpm records or listen to a cassette tape I’d recorded of the top twenty hit singles, broadcast on BBC Radio 1 every Sunday.
Music was my salvation. This was especially so from 1974, when I started Walworth Comprehensive. It was a mixed school with a dreadful uniform of burgundy skirt and blazer, white socks, black shoes and a pink-checkered blouse for the girls, and black trousers, white shirt with burgundy tie for the boys.
I wasn’t prepared for secondary school life at all. Why would I want to do home economics, learn how to use a Bunsen burner, play hockey on a freezing cold Tuesday morning, do combined crafts, learn art or French? I’d much rather be at home listening to Glam Rock and ABBA, who I absolutely loved.
I didn’t mind the core subjects of English, maths, geography and history. I didn’t mind the homework and did a project on the history of tennis, and that’s the only thing I have kept from my school-days.
My favourite was the music class. The teacher, Mr Lawrence, did quizzes, which I really enjoyed because I listened to different genres of music and knew a bit about theory, scales and key signatures. I had guitar lessons, but on an acoustic guitar and we were taught classical pieces; not my cup of tea at all!
Needless to say, I left school at sixteen, never sat my CSEs and only attended a couple of days during the last term. I went straight into full-time employment at WH Smith and paid my mum and dad housekeeping from my very first pay-packet onwards.
I have no regrets whatsoever about my lack of schooling or qualifications. Its never held me back from anything I’ve wanted to do in my life. I’m so grateful to mum for understanding my feelings and taking the flak from the authorities. I’ll never know to this day how I got away with having so many days off.
I remember being at home on the very last day, 11th April 1979, looking out of our kitchen window. We lived in a maisonette above some shops and as soon as I saw a kid walking along the road in that drab burgundy uniform, I knew school was out – forever!
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