At School

A Memory of Kingsbury.

I was at school at Tylers Croft school in 1957 for 18 months before we moved to Oxfordshire.
I remember walking to school from where I lived in Salmon Street, along Slough Lane and passed the Green Man pub and crossing over the Kingsbury Road to the Girls school. My father used to cycle the same route to work where he was a toolroom turner at Pheonix who made electric cyclinder cleaners.
We lived in the top half of the house.

On the way to school we would meet the other girls who lived along the route. We would go to the swimming pool outside the school to be given so called swimming lessons but it took so long to get into the freezing old water and shiver that not much ever got done. I taught myself to swim in the shallow part of the sea. But I recall the changing rooms at school and the showers that nobody wanted to have.

The huge classes of 45 all sitting in rows. Streamed and tests with positions in class. Country dancing in the hall. PE wearing horrid navy blue knickers we had to roll up and tuck in to the elastic as we played netball.

School dinners with oblong metal containers full of mash, carrots and stew dished out by the two at the end serving the rest.

We had to stand up when a teacher came into the classroom.

I used to draw pictures of ladies in Cinderella ball gowns when I was meant to be doing sums under my book and flap it down if the teacher came round. I used to hurry and get them finished so that I could.

I wore a white school blouse buttoned up to the top with long sleaves and a maroon and grey tie with a plain grey flared below the knee serge skirt. White ankle sox and brogue brown shoes or sandles. I had shoulder length wavy brown hair.