bucket and spade. Of course, the fateful day came when my liberty
was curtailed by Bookham Primary School. Early in the morning, my mother and I, with Chris in the pram and Fluffy the cat in tow, would speed down Crabtree Lane, past Mr Casselden’s wall where Fluffy would stop (I don’t know what he did all day but he was back on the wall when I came home), along the Top Road, through the snicket next to Mrs Young’s house and down the High Street to school. During last year’s visit, I went to the library to
use a computer and found myself sitting beneath a window where I had last sat at the age of eight in Mr Beal’s class. I closed my eyes and it all came into place: the huge boiler in the corner, those sitting close to it pink as little lobsters and those furthest away blue round the lips in spite of their liberty bodices and hand knitted jumpers; the smell of lead pencils and sharpenings; metal all that noise, but the lessons were a feast for my curiosity, and to this day, I remember Mrs Chivers [gives you the shivers] reading Longfellow’s Hiawatha with such rhythm and musicality that only for poetry but also for North American Indians and horses. The horses were never to be, as I was pledged to the art of ballet dancing, but I did try to ride Farmer Robert’s cows and even tied a piece of rope onto the handle bars of my bike as reins. This nearly led to the loss of my two front teeth when my steely steed refused to turn a corner and this Indian bit the dust.
At lunch time, we would traipse down to the Barn Hall in a raggedy crocodile, where Miss Amy reigned in the kitchen for years before and after my time. To this day, I can still taste her salt beef and mash, and after years of French cuisine that ignores this recipe for silverside, I’ve once again discovered this delicacy at The Plough in
After school, there was the neighbouring sweet shop full of giant sweet jars (these have now sherbet dabs, acid drops, gob-stoppers and many other treats which faded out of my life as ballet invaded it, since baby ballerinas don’t eat sweets. The shop is still there, without the goodies, and I have kept an undying passion for jelly babies, bears and crocodiles!
Sports Day was tremendous fun. We were divided into four houses, Wellington (red), Drake (blue), Nelson (yellow) and I think it was Raleigh more sleepless nights? The old favourites were fought out, including the sack race and the three legged race which was a bit of a challenge, as I had rather longer legs than most of my partners. This gave us a ‘dot and carry one’ gait and often ended in disaster, but a great time was had by all. I can still sharpen a pencil and write with pen and ink, but dear Arthur Browning, my headmaster in those days, couldn’t have anticipated my angst as I try to get this piece onto a computer. He did, however, meet my twins William and Emily on they were of a similar age to me when I was at Bookham Primary School.
link to my childhood and the village.
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