Being Brought Up In Streatham

A Memory of Streatham.

I was born at home at 60 Braxted Park in June 1946. Julie, who was born in 1943 and I attended St Helen's Grammar School for Girls, I from 1951 until 1962. Our mother and Mrs Westley used to walk us and her children Jackie and Jill across the common and sometimes we would have picnics in the rookery together after school. I liked junior school except when Miss Howlings shouted at me for calling her Mrs when I asked for a star, having achieved 3 high marks. I was only 6 and I returned to my desk in Transition quaking, refusing to go to school for several days. My father took me back and spoke to Miss Tarry, she was the go-between, parents rarely managed to get through to Miss Howlings. Anyway I returned, only for the same thing to happen when I was nine, but that was in French, same response though. Miss Tarry, I realised when I studied occupational therapy, probably suffered from Petit Mal fits, as she used to make faces and funny noises and be completely unaware of her surroundings for about 40 seconds or so. I use this as an excuse for only getting 4 out of 100 for scripture! She was at least kind whereas Miss Howlings was extremely frightening particularly to small children. My sister Julie was not at all scared of her and when Miss Howlings demanded her Head Girl badge back for some misdemeanour, Julie asked for her money back. She remained Head Girl! Some of the teachers were obsessed with men and warned us against them. We used to change for gym in our classroom as the outside shed was so cold, Miss Tarry found us and said that it would attract men to look in at the windows. Perhaps she was right, these days she might well be. It was a strange education, strange teachers: Miss Ormerod who used to put her hand in front of her like a French policeman and say 'Alt'. I don't know what country she came from. Mrs Wooster who taught French was a tiny lady and wore extremely high heeled shoes, if she was walking past a fence, you would see her head before her lower half because the heels pushed her out of kilter. She was very nice but I still couldn't do French. French oral exams with Miss Howlings were absolute torture. We had to wait one at a time in the big hall and watch the railway clock ticking. We knew we had two minutes to wait and then it was our turn. Our two minutes felt like ten. It was a peculiar schooling, I think it taught us how to cope with rather strange people and a lot of us ended up in the so called 'helping professions'. If you were clever and didn't need good teachers you might get 5 O levels, but not that many did anything with them as far as I remember as we were expected to find nice boys and get married. My sister stayed an extra year to do German and ended up with 6 O levels and I left with one, English. She went to British American Tobacco and I went to ICI to become shorthand typists. She did the decent thing and got married at 20 and had two children. I tried everything in order to escape working in an office and went to Canada, Norway and Germany. When I came back in 1968 apart from getting married, I did my O levels and went to college to do Occupational Therapy.

I spent most of my spare time wandering round the Rookery, Norwood Grove and Streatham Common. I loved being outside and enjoyed walking to and from school with my best friend Deirdre Phillips. We went to Canada together. We weren't allowed to have much freedom as children and lived in a first floor flat in an Edwardian House. We didn't have bicycles and weren't allowed to go to the Ice Rink or anywhere where we might mix with a 'lower class of person than we would meet at school'. I didn't consider us to be of any class really. When we were teenagers we did all these things and having gone to work at 16 I became quite independent. We went to St Oswald's and St Phillips' youth clubs and enjoyed ourselves with these simple activities.

When I was 29 I worked for Lambeth Council and my first area was Kennington and then Streatham, so I was back at the beginning. I often slipped into Pratts to enjoy the smell of the material, I liked dressmaking. Deirdre's mother was a dressmaker and taught us both how to make clothes.

I am now retired and about to celebrate my 70th birthday, I still don't feel grown up so probably never shall, but I am still healthy, live near the south coast with a little bit of land and we have just bought a camper van so intend to enjoy myself. We do volunteer with Foodbank and City Angels but that is quite interesting and both need to be done.

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