Junior Years 1947 1951

A Memory of Intake.

The junior years at Sydney Road School were quite good for me, despite the fact that I was the worst fighter in our year. Before a blow had even touched me I would be crying [talk about Coward of the County], but despite these little setbacks I took to the education system and did not do too bad. In the first year our teacher was Miss Tune whose idea of punishing naughty boys was to put them in the girls' sewing classes instead of them having the opportunity of cutting up and glueing pieces of cardboard. I am still fairly proficient at sewing buttons on my shirts and repairing torn clothes. Our teacher during the second year was Miss Rustling. This woman looked like a film star, she was beautiful. When the boys spotted her coming through the school gates, staggering under the weight of schoolbooks that she had taken home to mark, there was a mad rush to help her carry them. Her father was a builder and in 1948 was building some houses in Dublin Road, so we were taken on a walk to see her dad's building site. We were greeted by the shouts of the bricklayers who implored us to go back to school and learn our lessons. They also told us that we only came to visit when the sun was shining and never thought to fetch us when it was snowing or raining or freezing. That was a lesson that I did not take on board because I was to spend the 50 years of my working life as a bricklayer. Our third year teacher was Mr Butcher, who had supernatural powers. When writing on the blackboard he knew who was misbehaving behind his back and if the first warning went unheeded he would spin round and throw his piece of chalk at the guilty party with unnearing accuracy. He was brilliant. I don't remember much about our fourth year teacher Mrs Kirkland, but she must have been pretty good at her job because quite a few of the class passed their 11 plus exams and progressed to the local Grammar or Technical High Schools. My favourite dinner lady was Mrs Roome who would give me extra rice and prunes, I think it was because not many kids liked prunes, but I will always remember her with affection

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