Primary school

So...Primary School...generally I have rosy memories and happy thoughts when I think
of Primary School. I loved school and lapped it up...mostly (except of course Maths)
In the first picture, the teacher sitting in the middle was very very fierce. She had been at the school so long that she had even taught my dad. She was of the opinion that children should have their heads soundly rapped by her knuckles if they were noisy or inattentive or..well almost anything really. We were only allowed to go to the toilet at break times so if you needed to go inbetween, you either had to hold on, getting more and more uncomfortable or you wet yourself. There was quite a lot of wetting oneself going on and her reaction to that was making the offending child clear it up, then sat the offending child on the radiator pipes to dry out. More than one child went home with scalded buttocks. She wouldn't be allowed to still be a teacher these days but was at the school for more years than I have had hot dinners (exaggeration of course..I am Queen of the Hyperbole).
Everyone, all the parents and possibly all the teachers too, were terrified of her. As our school was very small, with only three classes, we were with her for about 2 - 3 years...it was such a relief to move into the middle class.
The second picture is a picture of our middle class. This teacher was friendly and kind and fun. We all loved her.
The school, a small village school, took children from the neighbouring countryside. As I have mentioned, my dad and many of his brothers went to that school. There were railings all around the playground and in one place the railing were bent.My dad always claimed that one of his brothers (who shall remain nameless at this point) stuck his head through the railings which had to be forcibly bent to allow him to get out again. I believed this implicitly..until it occurred to me just recently that my dad was a great teller of stories and maybe, it wasn't true!!!  (My dad had been in Africa during World War 2. He had a large scar on his neck which he claimed to be variously, the result of a spear thrown by a Zulu warrior, or where he had got caught on a parachute buckle..it wasn't until years later that I discovered that actually it was the result of a very large boil..but the other stories were so much more interesting!  He wasn't a liar or a deceiver, just a great entertainer)

Our school didn't have indoor toilets so if it was raining, we had to run across the playground to get to them. I also remember being told to run very fast and not to look up at the roof of the school if it was windy as the slates had a habit of falling off. No health and safety rules then!! Well, these WERE the Health and Safety Rules...Run and Don't look up
The 'Good Old Days', eh.
That's all for now
The End