Mama’s Diary Chapter 1.05 – My Early Schooling

When I was five my parents enrolled me at St Christopher’s Primary School run by two spinster school teachers. At the same time I commenced dancing lessons following the MRAD syllabus.

The school was white stucco exterior and had green painted decorative wood inserts(like a Tudor house) and red roof. There was a big ash tree with a swing in the front yard and an asphalt playground at the rear. At the back entrance was a large rubbish tin. Inside was a cloak room with pegs and lockers; a small study for the two lady teachers and two large classrooms which could be subdivided with movable partitions. We had a uniform and boys and girls attended. I remember John and Dennis Paine – sons of a local Doctor. As teenagers we played tennis with them. Years later, one night I was dancing with John and he was called over by the Manager of the Hotel. When he came back I said “It’s Dennis isn’t it?” John said “Yes-he’s just being blown up in the Hood”. Sometime later I apologised for being so direct. John said to me that on the contrary, it had been a help to him. I also remember Colin Burnes

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who was married to me with great pomp and ceremony beside the dustbin aged 7 or 8 years. Colin was the pilot of a Lancaster shot down over Germany. I remember Fay Pell – a girl with one leg totally enclosed in an iron frame due to polio and another girl called Leslie. Both familys – the Pell’s and Leslie’s family lived in lovely tutor homes at Headcoln. We used to visit each other in our homes and I can recall Daddy and Mr Longhurst(The Mills lorry driver) each with a head out the car window driving through fog to get us home again.

Armistice day was a Big Day. We all stood still for one minute. One year it was all too much for a little girl called Nancy and in the silence we could all hear the wee trickling away onto the floor.

When I was 10, we were taken away from St Christopher’s and sent to another private school, this time for girls only called “Highfield”. The house – and imposing three-storey Victorian edifice was the other end of town. It was run by two spinster sisters who had a fluent French-a good grasp of Latin, English and Maths – and generally worked us hard. We wore red and grey and white uniforms and, as at St Christopher’s we were taken to school every day by car and brought home again at the end of the day. The ladies were the Misses Burnett. My father was keen for me to have a classical education as