I don’t know if this first school visit was pre-arranged, or whether the start of my education was a mere speculative whim, but there it began. The head teacher, Mrs. Hill, took us into the larger ground floor classroom, where, even though we were still in barmy September days, the huge turtle stove was throbbing away, digesting its fat bellyful of coke.
Mrs. Hill told me to go and find a seat by someone I knew, while she and ‘Mummy’ had a little chat. I wandered off through where children were sitting in groups of six. They were all beavering away with chalk on slates, that is yer actual blue/black stuff they put on roofs, though each piece did have a wooden frame, for safety in handling. I didn’t see anyone I knew, so I found an empty chair and sat down. After a little while, the girl opposite me hissed-
“Do some sums!” I hadn’t a clue what she was on about. I just gawped at her. After a while, she cautioned me again-
“Do some sums or yull gerrinter trubble!” Still no reaction from the half-witted intruder. Finally, in exasperation, my Good Samaritan reached over, grabbed my slate, and quickly scratched me some sums, before shoving it back with-“There! I’ve done you a few to be goin’ on with, so’s yull not gerra koppit
I learned we had to spend two years in this big classroom, because the school had lost its ‘Babies’ dept, when, it was hit by an incendiary bomb in the blitz. In the schoolyard, along by the boundary wall of Mr. Scott’s stable yard, was the burnt out shell of this ‘reception dept’ I suppose they would call it, now. It had been a single storey, wooden building. The firefighters must have got to it very quickly, because the frame was intact, including the rafters. The floorboards and wall linings had burned away in parts, but not all. It was still possible to walk about, inside, albeit precariously, and to drop down holes in the boards, between the joists, and crawl into the gloomy under-building.
This was forbidden, of course, but still possible, and we still did it. We got a sharp surprise, one day. A bunch of us had gone down into the under floor space, looking for ‘treasures’, when someone announced a ‘find’ we weren’t seeking- the dead body of a corpse! A little girl screamed; the ‘corpse’ rolled over and rubbed its eyes, while moaning, horribly. There were more screams, as we all started scrambling out, in reverse, followed by the ragged, scruffy, unlamented, who was now finding voice for his displeasure at his rude awakening, but not diction- it still sounded like a dead corpse making haunting noises at us.
He surfaced just in time to confront the staff, who were coming to investigate the furore. They shooed the zombie out of the school gate, and he lurched off, down the street, yelling his dissatisfaction at our inhospitality.
He was generally held to be an itinerant who had scrambled in there to sleep off a ‘drunk’. The ruin was demolished very soon after, and the school yard was reinstated over the site.
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| “Do some sums!” |
One of the first things I learned, though not on the curriculum, had as profound an effect on me as anything that followed. I learned the terrible mysteries of school dinners. For the princely sum of five old pennies per day, we were subjected to culinary experiments worthy, almost, of the Japanese Changi Catering Corps. One example will suffice- Corned beef (not Teddy Wilde’s class) instant mash, coarse salad, gravy over everything.
But there did arise a mighty champion, in the fight against school dinners- well he turned out to be more of a Kamekaze pilot, as champions go. His name was Barry Burgin. We ate on the same flat topped desks at which we sat all day, not necessarily at one’s own desk, because not everyone stayed, so diners tended to gather at the front. The desktops lifted, to reveal the usual storage for books, boxes of counters, and such.
Now in spite of the fact that, in our natural waking state, we were hungry little waifs, we still needed to be encouraged to eat it all up, because with food this good, there was many a time when some of us would just as soon not bother. However, a clean plate was mandatory.
Well Barry Burgin (blessed be his name) discovered a way to keep everybody happy. When no one was looking, he whipped up the desk lid, shovelled the contents of his plate into the desk, dropped the lid, and wiped the tell-tale skid marks off the edge of his plate with the unravelled cuff of his jersey. Oh this boy was smart, you must admit. Unfortunately, the universal satisfaction only lasted until sometime during the afternoon school, when some luckless individual had occasion to lift his desk lid, to find the desk awash with congealed dinner, and cried ‘WUAAAGH!!!’
So, it only took until the second day for the criminal to be identified. On the third day, understandably, instead of sitting with the rest of us, Master Burgin (may his name live forever) was incarcerated behind the 3ft high wire mesh fireguard, at a single desk, on the plinth, by the side of the turtle stove, and this is where our hero won his Kamekaze wings, Broken, First Class. This was because, although completely isolated thus, he reasoned that if they didn’t actually see him do it, then they wouldn’t know it was him! So, nobody looking? Right! Up with the lid! Shovel, shovel! Bang! Wipe! ‘Finished Miss!’
I don’t know what they did with him. They probably hauled him off to the central kitchens, in the city (we were blessed with container meals) and hurled him into the mincer. At least it's nice that we can believe that some of us did eat a trace of real meat, for a while, thanks to the sainted Barry Burgin, Hero and Martyr of St. Silas’ School.