The School Years

Dad's school years...

...In the main (junior) school, we were introduced to paper, notebooks, dip pens, and inkwells. Those dip pens were treacherous. Excessive pressure would cross the nib and make it useless. Nibs were expected to last a long time so breaking a nib was a crime. Too heavy a dip in the well and an overloaded pen made a blot that could not be eradicated as we could with the slate we’d left behind. Mistakes were recorded for all time and could not be hidden. Now that we were recording all our work, accuracy and neatness were all-important.

            Handwriting, spelling, and arithmetic (much mental) were daily exercises. Reading around the class (an activity that is now derided) took a whole lesson every week. It kept you awake and concentrating because you might be the next child called upon to continue the narrative. Woe betide the child whose attention had wandered and who could not continue when called upon. He spent his playtime writing lines.
 

            What did I learn in my years at Shedfield? Being a Church of England School meant frequent visits from the local vicar and, in the infants’ school, we had a short religious service to start the day. We learned how life began – we saw pictures of Adam and Eve with the serpent lurking in the grass. No Darwinian theory of evolution for us; that came later in the grammar school. We did not question how Noah made it to the North and South poles to round up polar bears and penguins. They were clearly shown entering the Ark, along with elephants and giraffes solemnly walking up the gang plank. The teacher backed up the vicar so it must be true. We did not question how one man’s lunch stretched to feed 5000. I suppose we swallowed all these myths as true. I have wondered since if the teacher and vicar really believed all those miracles they fed us or whether they were merely doing their duty as Christians.

           The teacher had to be a complete all-rounder. The day started with arithmetic; long division was especially tricky. The bell rang. Then it was history: Julius Caesar; King Henry and his bevy of wives; Oliver Cromwell – we had them all. The bell rang. Now it’s geography. Each classroom had a large wall map and sometimes a globe, “All that red is our Empire”. We learned to pinpoint countries, rivers, and towns. 

There was an emphasis on patriotism. The school had a tall flagpole. On special nationwide days, the flag was solemnly hoisted. A day known as Empire Day was most special. The whole school gathered around the pole, the flag was raised, the headmaster gave an address, we sang the National Anthem, and gave three cheers for the King. The headmaster allowed us to stage battles; I used to enter the fray with an old bayonet. Goodness knows what would have happened if I’d put out someone’s eye, or inflicted serious damage on the enemy.

           We played football during the midday break and there were few rules. While tackling an opposing player, I had the misfortune to knock him down and break his leg. Poor Henry, he was carried into school and the doctor was called. Rumours spread: Henry might die, Sidney broke Henry’s leg; Sidney is a killer, keep away from him. I was ostracised for days. Then Henry turned up at school with his leg in plaster to be the hero of the day. We became friends again.

The playground adjoined a large area of heather common land on which was a rudimentary golf course. Finding a lost ball was an event. At the other end of the common was a small sweetshop where a half penny (old money) would buy a bag of aniseed balls which our little group would share and we’d see who could get the reddest tongue.

There was a large wood next to the common and we would make primitive bows and fire silly little arrows at passing cars. That game came to an end when a motorist stopped his car and caught us. We were too scared to run. He took our names and must have then met with the local policeman. He caught up with us as we returned to school, gave us a good lecture, and said, “Tell your Dad to give you a good thrashing.” I did not do this! Had I done so Dad, humiliated that his son had been so naughty, would have well and truly thrashed me. He was generally easy going but to be involved with a policeman was unforgivable. I think on the whole, the school did not do so badly....

.... Reading this again, with fresh insight, I see now that my daughter Sid, christened of course for her grandfather, was more than aptly named.

 

How Times Have Changed

My father's story continued.. 

           There was, of course, no bathroom. When the house was built, a bathroom was considered a luxury, only indulged in by the rich. Even larger houses were built without one. The current opinion in those days was that immersing oneself in water in wintertime was tantamount to signing one’s death warrant. Our bath was a large galvanized iron tub, the size of a coffin that hung outside the house on a nail. Bathing was usually a Saturday occupation when everyone took turns, with much to and froing with buckets of hot water. The copper was lit, and the bath brought into the washhouse in warmer weather, where there was more privacy, or into the living room in front of the stove on cold days. A once a week bath was considered adequate.

            Sanitation was crude. The lavatory was in a small hut in the garden, about 10 or 20 meters from the house. It was primitive in the extreme: a wooden seat with two holes, one large for adults, and one small for children, with buckets underneath (using the large hole as a child was fraught with danger!). Those buckets had to be emptied weekly. This meant digging a large hole in the garden every Saturday into which the contents of the buckets were tipped. This was not a pleasant task but commonplace in the country where sewerage systems did not exist. When male members of the family were considered muscular enough, they had to take their turn in the operation. Toilet paper? A sheer waste of money! Newspaper did the job and cost tuppence a day. Each bedroom had its chamber pot and it was another job for mother to empty and clean these each morning.

            There were 3 bedrooms: two of reasonable size and one very small. The floors were covered with linoleum and were bitterly cold in winter. There was no bedroom heating at all. We went to bed, undressed to our shirt, and shivered ourselves into warmth. Pyjamas did not exist. We had a perfunctory wash in the scullery, with cold water, then got into bed as quickly as possible. 

To be continued...

My Sainted Father

My sainted father (and I say sainted because he raised four daughters, and I was clearly the most well behaved) would have had his 97th birthday on Friday, so in honour of him, I am dedicating some of my blogs this week to his story. He was a gifted writer, and after several entreaties, he agreed to document his life so that his grandchildren who did not have the opportunity to spend much time with him when he was alive, would have the chance to get to know him through his own words. 

My father, Sidney (the sixth of nine children) was born in 1917 during the First World War. His father worked in a "Reserved Occupation" and it was considered more important for him to continue his work in England, than fight in the trenches in France. So in his own words....

         .....My home was a very small, old cottage. When the cottage was built, it stood alone in a large empty area between Shedfield and Bishop’s Waltham. Shedfield had two shops; Bishop’s Waltham was our local shopping centre and boasted a whole street of shops, a flour mill, cinema (the cost of a Saturday morning movie was 3 pence); and the ruins of a bishops’ castle.

            The cottage was probably a woodman’s cottage and it was the oldest house in the area.  In solitary houses a well was obligatory, but before I was born a water main had been installed 50 yards away, and my father had a pipe laid to the house. At the end of the water-main pipe was a single tap that was installed in the washhouse. This was a small room attached to the end of the house. It contained a large copper boiler, fuelled by wood, to supply hot water for the weekly clothes wash and family baths. No daily showers or baths in those days.

            In the washhouse there was a large bench and scrubbing board, and a huge iron mangle through which the clothes were squeezed to remove surplus water; a poor substitute for a modern spin dryer. This mangle would never pass the safety standards of today. It had huge open draining wheels and two large wooden rollers.

            Mother was the washing machine. All clothing, such as shirts, socks, and so on, was worn for a week and it was all collected in the washhouse on Mondays, along with bedding. The copper boiler was lit early in the morning, and then Mother spent hours scrubbing and rubbing with a huge bar of yellow soap, soaking, mangling, and finally hanging all the clean washing on a long clothes line. A rainy Monday was a disaster, with wet clothes hanging everywhere indoors. Mother never stopped running on a Monday. She still had her daily housework to do, bringing in the coal and water, and preparing a cooked meal for the family after work.

            Mondays must have been days when Mother wished she had never married, but on my school holidays when she and I were alone together I would be in the wash house with her, filling the copper, tending the fire, and turning the mangle; I don’t think I ever heard her complain.....

To be continued.

Teachers Are People Too

You know you are in trouble when your son's teacher sidles up to you in the school parking lot and whispers conspiratorially "I have something for your blog!".

Last week the children had to present the speeches they had been working on to their classmates. Some of the children were naturally nervous and were concerned that they might make a mistake or flub some words. Their teacher patiently explained that even adults make mistakes and that she too occasionally uses the wrong word, upon which my son pipes up "But you use big words we don't understand so we don't know when you get them wrong".  He made a valid point.

Now Grady's speech was on Great Britain's Special Air Service and was relatively straight forward compared to Sid's, which she researched and composed by herself. I don't know what she was thinking, but here is an extract from her speech that she actually had memorized ...

The horse family preceded humans by 5 million years ...  The Hyacotherium is from the Oligene period, the Merychippus from the Miocene period, the Equues is from the Pleistocene period and the Pliohippus from the Plocene period.

Considering none of those words were in any of my spell-checks, I can only hope she had them recorded correctly. 

My thanks go out to Hanna Z. for her contribution to today's blog ! 

Hockey Fans

I have documented before, we are not a sporting family. Fair enough in my younger days I was good at running (probably a logical reason behind that, if I explored further), Lindsay is on her school swim team and Grady is willing - if not always able - to try his hand at anything. In fact he is currently sporting a black eye because he was nailed in the face with a tennis ball. Rob enjoys riding, as do the older two kids occasionally. You notice I haven't included Sid, because, well Sid is Sid. Team sports aren't really her thing.

I have explained this because you can imagine my surprise when I stumbled out of bed at some ungodly hour this morning, to discover my children were already up watching The Hockey Game. I love how in Canada it is always "The" Hockey Game, with the assumption that everyone and their brother knows "the" game in question.

Anyway "The" game today was Canada vs Switzerland (I think), Sidney & Grady were totally engrossed. They don't know a thing about Hockey, but they were riveted none the less. Sid calls out, "Canada has another goal", at which point even Rob took an interest. "Oh look," he exclaimed, "They just scored another one." I guess Sid must know more than I give her credit for, because she replied in a voice dripping in sarcasm "That's the action replay dad". Funny how her voice says "Dad" but her tone implies "Idiot".

Go Canada ! 

Post Script:  Rob insists he knew it was an action reply, and apparently I stand corrected, it was Sweden not Switerland.  Who knew ?

Cool Mum

According to my eldest daughter Lindsay, her friends all love me and think I'm a "cool" mum, or whatever the current equivalent of "cool" is. It would appear that I have earned this dubious honour by my willingness to host impromptu parties and wild sleepovers. The infamous night comes to mind, when a dozen teens slept in a tent in our backyard and were hooting & hollering on the trampoline at 2.00 A.M. I'm pretty sure our neighbours don't share the loving feelings towards me that Lindsay's friends do. In fact, I think the neighbours may even be a little afraid of us.

Apparently I am also a "cool" mum because of my open mind towards body piercings, (my son at aged 8, was the first and still the only boy in his school to sport an earring) and tattoos. When Lindsay wanted one for her 16th birthday, I went along and got one too. Of course that has made me very unpopular with other parents who don't share my laissez faire attitude.  

Finally, we have the zoo like atmosphere of our home. The dog that chases ghosts on the ceiling, the cat that falls in the toilet, the guinea pigs, rabbits and the occasional trip to the barn. Then, when you throw in my two other children, chaos reigns. What's a few more squealing girls thrown into the mix ?. 

Now, I will let you in on a little secret, I am not a "cool" mum at all. I'm just an idiot, and I never learn from my mistakes.  When one of my offspring suggest a party, sleepover, body art or the heinous trip to Chuckee Cheese with their cousins, my first response is usually, "Sure, why not ? What harm can it do?". It doesn't take long for reality to rear its ugly head, and I very quickly move to the panicked stage of "OMG! WTF was I thinking ?". That is also the time my husband very smugly sneers "I told you so!".  

To be fair, there never has been any harm done, unless of course you count the tenuous relationship we now have with our neighbours. Lindsay couldn't have found better friends, they are all lovely girls. When they troop upstairs from the basement for breakfast the morning after a sleepover that is typically light on sleep and heavy on noise, it is my turn to have fun.  While they sit there at the dining room table, blurry eyed, eating their bacon and waffles (typically covered in whipped cream, icing sugar, chocolate sauce, various fruits and maple syrup) I comment on the various tidbits I heard the night before. Sound carries through the furnace ducts, and there is one right beside my bed. Nothing funnier than the stunned expressions on their teenage faces, as they realise their secrets are secret no more!

The Animals Are Easy ..

People often ask me how we manage with so many animals. I will let you in on a little secret, the animals are easy, the kids not so much. It is not the ferocious dog you have to worry about in our house, it is the children that are more likely to bite you.

At the latest count we have one horse, one dog, four cats, four remaining rabbits, two frogs, an aquarium of fish, and our latest lapse in judgement - three guinea pigs. To be fair the animals are quite a bit of work, at least that is my husband's opinion, but as the kids are getting older they are taking on more of the responsibility, but it's not always smooth sailing.

A typical morning starts when the kids are out of bed, and I commence my broken record routine.  "Grady have you done the rabbits ?" and "Sid, don't forget the pigs".  Sid is usually pretty good, but Grady takes some reminding - especially in winter when he has to go out in the snow to get to the rabbit hutch. Sid is also in charge of feeding the dog - at least when there isn't a mouse hiding in the dog  food. One of  Grady's chores used to be feeding the cats, however the smell of the cat food upset his delicate constitution and quite honestly I couldn't stand listening to the exaggerated gagging and coughing routine every morning as he dry heaved over the bin, each time he opened a sachet of cat food. Now I have taken over feeding the cats and it's my turn to dry heave over the bin instead.

Night time is the fun time, and not what you're thinking.  No sooner have we gone to bed than the cats who have been sleeping all day come in to their own.  We have one female cat - a docile creature who is constantly picked on by the three male cats.  She has taken to hiding under our bed, while the others patrol the perimeter, growling and hissing as she yowls loudly in response. It is enough to make you crazy.  If we're really lucky the victim will beat a hasty retreat across our bed in full claw mode. Rob has taken to keeping a pile of objects beside the bed that he can lob unsuccessfully in the general direction of whichever animal is making the most noise. It is always fun if I have to get up in the dark and stumble over missiles that have landed in the middle of the hall, further evidence of Rob's poor aim. 

If we are really lucky, on a good day - Thursdays come to mind - it is always jolly good fun to be awoken by a loud cursing and swearing as some poor hapless soul (usually my husband) steps in a pile of vomit, left surreptitiously in the middle of a doorway by a vengeful feline. Probably the same creature that had a projectile whiz by his ear a few hours earlier. This is usually accompanied by some variant of "That f***ing cat", together with banging cupboards and slamming doors. You have no idea how much noise can be generated with just paper towels and disinfectant. Good times.