Two classrooms next to the shops in Maxwell Avenue,
Westerton where I spent my Primary 1 and 2 years. I think I remember my first
day at school in August 1957 – my mother standing outside the black,
metal-slatted fence with the other mothers while I walk resolutely (but
perfectly happily) towards the door, perhaps looking back once or twice to
wave.
The two classes, the domains of respectively Miss
Paul (Primary 1) and Mrs Ramsay (Primary 2) were separated by the small
workroom. The building was completed by a short central wing separated from the
classrooms by a corridor, and here was the room where I endured elocution
lessons. The structure was surrounded by a tarred playground, with a few trees.
What struck me particularly in Primary 1 was the size of the boys a year above
me, who seemed to tower over my head.
The classrooms were heated by coal-burning metal
stoves, situated against the back wall in each room and surrounded on three
sides by a metal fire guard. On rainy days, wet clothes would be hung on these
guards to dry and a steamy damp smell filled the room. Once there was concern
that the stove in Miss Paul’s room was releasing smoke and fumes, and we were
evacuated into the playground from where we watched surprisingly matter-of-factly
the activities of the fire brigade.
Miss Paul I remember most for her morning routine
with the long wooden pointer which she used to direct our attention to specific
details written on the blackboard. At the start of each school day, she would
hold this stick upright, and eye it expectantly. ‘Good morning, boys and girls,’
Mr Pointer would obediently intone, his voice sounding surprisingly like our
teacher’s. ‘Good morning, Mr Pointer.’
Our dutiful chant was languid, with the emphasis on the first syllable
of ‘morning’.
I remember one of my classmates bringing in a
yellow toy truck which I coveted. My parents, wishing I think to recompense me
for having had to endure an appendectomy, offered to buy me one if could
describe it adequately enough for them to identify it in a toy shop. Sadly for
me, on this occasion my powers of description failed.
I remember one day we are working through a list of
questions relating to a passage in our reading books. I raise my hand, and when
invited to do so, respond correctly to a question. The answer is ‘Tom.’ I
notice that the answer to the subsequent question is also ‘Tom.’ To indicate my
preparedness to answer it, I mutter sotto
voce ‘Tom…Tom…Tom’, until Miss Paul tells me to be quiet. I am a little
aggrieved that she fails to appreciate my anticipatory precocity.
Apparently it was noted in Primary 2 that my
English skills were a little above-average. I was one of a number of pupils to
be given extension activities – work cards with a series of questions printed
on them, beneath each of which was a window cut out of the card. You laid the card
on a sheet of paper, and wrote the appropriate answer in each window.
I remember the day a boy didn’t show up in class at
the end of break. Mrs Ramsay asked if anyone had seen him, and I, eager to
please, was the one who said ’Yes!’ I had spotted him in the toilet block. The
teacher despatched me to retrieve him from the cubicle where I found him still
standing morosely. Clearly, he had not quite made it to the toilet in time.
He followed me across the playground back to the
classroom. Rather than walking beside him, I strode self-importantly in front
as the faces at the window watched. ‘He was dirty, wasn’t he?’ they said, when
he was being cleaned up elsewhere, and I was back in the classroom. ‘No!’ I
retorted, lying, but loyal.
Whatever else I learned in Mrs Ramsay’s class, one
thing I would never forget, and never forget where I had learned it – John Bunyan’s
poem To be a Pilgrim, which is in the
hymn books, and was Sir Winston Churchill’s favourite hymn. It was perhaps not
the most relevant piece for six-year-olds, but I can’t remember any difficulty
in memorising it. I loved the sound of the words, especially that ‘Hobgoblin
nor foul field can daunt his spirit’ in the last verse, which sounded
spectacular. These words have sadly been edited out in some anaemic modern
versions of the hymn.
The small workroom between the two classes looked
across the field to the railway line. I remember it as a sanctuary of glitter,
blunt-ended safety scissors, and coloured paper. And somehow with that room I forever
associate the delicious vocabulary of two old hymns:
Oh God of Bethel, by whose hand
Thy people still are fed
and especially
By cool Siloam’s shady rill
How fair the lily grows
Though I did not understand the meaning of these
words, the string of luscious syllables was a beauty touching somewhere deep. I can never hear the tune of ‘cool Siloam’
without knowing a strange wistful longing for that workroom, and recovering the
smell of glitter and glue, and the sound of Blue Trains clattering past.
In June 1959, without ceremony, I left the
Westerton Annexe for the last time. After the summer holidays, my class would
migrate to the Bearsden Academy Primary department in Bearsden itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment