School Time

I didn't like the school I went to...  I think there were quite a few reasons for this looking back on things now. 

1) I was a tomboy and would probably have been happier in a boys school than in a girls school
2) I accidentally got put up a year
3) I had a few minor health problems such as my skin and joint pains that made Physical Ed hard for me and this was a large part of the day, with one of the seven periods each day occupied by it
4) It was a boarding school and I did not board.  A really good way to never be part of things....
5) I was a geek....

I always wanted to belong, to have a best friend, to be part of things, but somehow I never was.  I can look back on it as an adult now and see that the girls I was at school with were pretty unhappy.  For some it was a good and stable place to be because their family life was pretty bad.  Some of my classmates had left their homes so young, 7 or 8...  I think they envied me going home and my nice Mum.

But anyway...  enough of the bad stuff...

The school was in an old manor house set in huge grounds and we pretty much were able to roam as we would.  I would always get in the back of my Dads van because my sis was much more of a lady than me and we would go the couple of miles to school and then down the long drive and he would drop us off at the grand entrance.

Our days would begin with assembly in the hall.  It was the only hall when I began with a grand stage and velvet curtains and old style gym apparatus folded against the walls.  I had not been their long when they built a sports hall but assembly was always in the main hall.

My first classroom was very close to the hall, just down some stairs and we were there as my class would file into our allocated rows at the front.  There would always be a reading and a hymn and I always enjoyed singing.  On Fridays a local vicar would come and take assembly.  There was one vicar who was so very lovely, his face was round and shone with loveliness.  Another young vicar came one time and ate a daffodil.

Once a term, for a week we would have class assemblies where a different class would do the assembly for that day.  We all used to look forward to doing this as it was a chance to do something quite fun.  There was also concerts and plays and all sorts of events that took place in the hall.  I remember there would be a concert at the end of every term for the parents and children as they got picked up.  We would sing Auld Langs Syne and I would so glad to be getting out of there....

I remember doing a nativity play.  I was the Inn Keeper.  The school had an interesting set of costumes, collected over many years.  Apparently the costume I choose for myself had a different colour for every item of clothing and very long boots.  My Mum and Sister rescued a really old jacket from the dress up chest which they paid for and have looked after ever since.

My first year I was the youngest girl in the school.  It was tradition that the youngest girl and the head girl would jointly light the bonfire on Bonfire Night.  The only thing I remember about these evenings was the size of the Bonfire.  I think the workmen collected wood for some time and their bonfires were a work of art.  I think I vaguely remember a guy as well.

We would have two lessons and then a break with tea and biscuits and then a further two lessons then lunch in the small dining room, or was it one?  Then lunch in the Small Dining Room and then lunch time then more lessons until 4.  As we got older, we had an extra lesson in the morning, a later lunch and a shorter lunch break.  At 4 there would be tea and cake.

The food was alright.  If you did not eat your veg you had to stay there until you did.  I hated it and was often stuck there for some time....  The only thing my Mum signed to say I did not have to eat it was Prunes, for which I have been ever thankful...  We had to cut up apples with a knife to eat them and table manners were very important.  Each day you would move round a place so the people on each table changed a little and you would sit with different staff.

I remember super shiny floors that were good fun to skid on.  I remember ice and a place that was always treacherous by the library and english room.  I remember boring a bike (I was not supposed to use the bikes because they were for boarders only) and coming off on the gravel on a bed on the dirt road down to the music block (I still have the scar).  I remember climbing trees.  All sorts of trees.  I remember watching tadpoles in the pond, squirrels on the lawn and wafting swarms of daddy long legs as we walked down to the music block.

The building fascinated me.  It had been added to and added to over the years so that it was a maze of corridors and rooms and no student ever got to see all of it.  Staff had rooms and little flats.  Other rooms were offices or hazardous or just plain private.  As a day girl I was rarely allowed into the dorms.  Boarders were not supposed to go to the dorms in breaks but I think they could at lunchtime.  I remember one Christmas my Mum took me in with her over the holidays as she had some work to do.  I spent a pleasurable afternoon exploring all the places I could not go at other times.  I went through every single dorm. My only disappointment was that tehre was no one to tell me which one was the haunted one....

But then there was the ghost everyone knew about, the one in the Mirror Hall.  This hall had a grand staircase and a floor to ceiling mirror and it was said that if you were on the stairs at night sometimes you would see a ghostly lady reflected in the mirror stood by you, and sometimes there would be a draft blowing out of the mirror and once someone had disappeared behind it...  There was rumoured to be tunnels and I remember one teacher telling us that there was a place she had found in the cellar where something had been bricked up and there was a draft.

One of the many places we were not supposed to go into was the old air raid shelter, which of course we did.  We were also not supposed to go beyond the school grounds, which I know I did.  I knew a family with a house beyond in the field and sometimes I would stand there and gaze at it, I even struck out once into the field.  Another time I walked along the edge, between the field and the wall of the walled gardens.  I never got to go in the gardens, but you could gaze out into it from the music block, rows of vegetables mostly.

Sometimes when there was snow we would be alloed to use plastic fertilizer bags to sled down the air raid shelter and then we got older we would go to the woods behind the school and sled down the big hill too.  That was one of the few PE lessons I enjoyed.  Swimming was torture - slogging away, lifesaving in clothes and the like.  Afterwards i would be so tired that walking back up the hill and getting to lessons on time was a problem for me.  I loathed tennis, although netball was alright.  Hockey was fine if the weather was ok, but we playe din pretty much any weather, mostly in our silly little gym skirts.  And cross country, ugh.  I liked badminton the best.  We each had a locker, old, old lockers used by generations of girls.

Everything was old and worn and well used.  The girls there may have been priviledged in some senses but life at school certainly was not.  In many ways there was very little freedom for anyone.  In fact some middle eastern families sent their daughters there for precisely that reason.  We wrote with ink pens and our desks had holes for ink pots we no longer used.  They had fold up lids for our books and years of graffitti.  Our school books were ancient our chairs hard and wooden.  As we got older we would have a sit for our class which would have comfy chairs and a record player.  I remember playing Final Countdown by Europe a lot and Silver Blue by Roxette.  Boarders had pet hamsters and tuck boxes.

Is it any wonder I felt left out as a day girl?  There were so many things they appeared to have that we did not, places to go we were not allowed.  They bonded in the face of adversity.  But still I know that they would have swapped with me in a flash, most of them, I think...

If I ever sent a child to boarding school it would either be a necessity or through their choice.  And I would never send a child as a day girl if it was obvious they would be excluded because of that.  but I think much of the damamge was done in my first couple of years there - being too young and put up a year.  but the ability to freely explore the outdoors was one I loved....