My first primary school

I started school in the January I turned 5. I don't think schools do this staggered entry over the year anymore, but they did then. My friend, Dean, had started the term before, and so I already new someone at the school. Except, they put me in a different class.

Also, often classes had more than one year group in them, so, there were boys there who had been at school for over a year, and they tried to play some tricks on me. On my first day, at breaktime, they told me it was time to go home, so I started to try to leave the school grounds, getting stopped by a teacher on the way out. It is difficult when you are only just about 5 to explain why you think it is time to go home to a teacher.

Also, they once pushed me into the girls toilet as I was on the way to the boys one. For some reason though, my teacher wouldn't accept that they had pushed me in, so tried to ridicule me by suggesting that perhaps I wanted to be a girl, and that they could find some girls clothes in lost property for me. After that, I decided I didn't much like school. Well, for a while at least.

On a friday afternoon, all three first year classes got together, and you could choose what you wanted to do. That was my favourite time, as Dean and I could do activities together. That was the best bit of the week.

Mum and Dad didn't teach me to read before I went to school, and it was probably just as well, as the school did the ITA reading system. This had a larger alphabet than the standard 26. I seemed to pick up reading and writing pretty quickly, and by the time I moved on to the next class, I was reading loads. At home, Mum and Dad were taking us to the Library regularly, and Mum also found my Uncle's collection of the Enid Blyton Mystery series (the Five Find Outers and Dog!). Well, I started reading everynight, and finished a book generally in about 3 days.

My other passions at this time were Lego and Dinosaurs. I started Lego with just some blocks that we had which could make a house. With the finishing of the houses on the road we had moved to, this was when I decided what I first wanted to be. A Brick Layer. With Lego it was easy, and looked just the same as what the brickies were doing over the road. However, I quickly discovered Space Lego (or technically Legoland Space), and that sealed it. I was to be an Astronaut. I still want to go into space, as soon as the option is there.

With my friend Dean, we also wanted to be Archeologists. I don't know how we learnt such a long word, but we wanted to find Dinosaur skeletons. This carried on for some time, but it was difficult to try to persuade teachers that we wanted to study these.

I was at my first primary school for another two years. I had interesting discussions with teachers over my reading. There was a system of books which were numbered and coloured. 1->25 Silver, and 1->25 Gold. This was no longer ITA, and I zipped through over half the books, 1 a night, for about 4 weeks, until a teacher asked if I was doing the comprehension work. What comprehension work? My class teacher wasn't doing these, and the moment we did, that put paid to such speedy reading. I understand the purpose of understanding the way our language fits together to create sentences, staements, stories..., But I never understood the point of going in depth to discuss things happening behind the stories in a fixed manner. I enjoyed reading, and understood what was going on in the Enid Blyton books, but I didn't need to discuss it in a committee, and I didn't need to understand it in a prescribed way. Or at least, that is what I thought at the time, and still do. I just realised that ultimately, that doesn't work in schools, where it can't be easily marked if there isn't a definite answer (or at least at that age).

Still, I went on, joined the Bird Watching club and found something else I really enjoyed doing. I learnt about many types of birds, even if most of the ones I got to see were Black-Headed Gulls.

I was also top of the class once for something that seemed just to come naturally to me. Because of all the books I had been reading (which my teacher at the time did suggest were too old for me) I started putting quotation marks around my story characters speech. This was another class which had two year groups in it, and I was in the younger year group, and I was the first person to be doing it. Ok, there were some small errors, I didn't start new lines for each new line of speech, but it made me top of the class for once, and I was excited about that.

Outside of school, I had a few very good friends, one of which I wasn't quite as good too as the others, which I do feel bad about now. I used to go over to Dean's, be told by his Mum that he wouldn't be ready to play for at least half an hour, and then wander over to Mark's just for that half an hour, before going back to Deans, with some excuse that I could only play for half an hour. I suppose, when you are a kid, you don't see anything wrong with that. I remember Mum telling me off for it once, and I stopped doing it, but never understood until I was much older why it was bad.

I also had a friend who was born on the same day as me, had the same name as my dad, and his older brother had the same name as me (including surnames). We did end up in the same class at school, and we used to have joint birthday parties, which was good fun, even if one year I ended up having none of my own birthday cake.

During this time, I can't remember exactly what year, I had my Tonsils out. I had been struggling to eat properly for ages, which unfortunately Dad thought I was being difficult with my dinner, and eventually my Mum took me to the Doctors as I was drastically losing weight. He took one look inside my mouth, and exclaimed that these were some of the largest Tonsils he had ever seen, and quickly had me booked into Hospital. So off I went to hospital, with my Koala bear (called Arla as when I got him, I could pronounce Koala, and it stuck). I went through to the operating theatre, and they insisted that Arla Bear had to be at the foot of the bed before giving me Anesthetic. I have never understood why that should be since I was asleep before I counted to 6, and I was very upset. You wouldn't have thought it would make a difference. The next thing I new was waking up, being sick with blood in the middle of the night, which didn't impress the Nurses. At least they didn't stick me in a bathroom for the rest of the night! The following day I went home, and for the next two weeks ate red and green jelly! Oh yes, and the first day I was allowed outside I went and fell in the nearby pond. I was playing next to it with my sister and another lad, throwing in a toy, and then using the ripples produced from throwing in stones to get it back to the shoreline. I reached out to try to grab it one time and fell in. A neighbour came and got me out, took me home where Mum dumped me in a hot bath to get warm again. Still, at least my appetite came back.

I also started going to Boys Brigade. My Dad was co-running a unit near where I was born, but that was too far away. A neighbour, however, was running one near us, and his son was a friend of mine at school. We started going, and I thoroughlly enjoyed it. Especially when we had a parade once a Month on a Sunday. I felt very proud to march along in my uniform. It might have been a bit square, but I learnt some important things, even how to tie a shoelace. It was good to be part of something like that.

I also started going to Sunday school (apart from Parade days). This was something Mum encouraged and I used to find the stories quite interesting. I never read the Bible as a book, but we did readings and the traditional stories of Jesus (Loaves and Fishes, Water into Wine...) which fascinated me at the time. I don't want to get indepth about this now, but later on things changed with respect to Church. For now, it was something I did, and was proud of.

tbc...