My Primary 3
year (which began in August 1959) and the first half of Primary 4 were spent at
Bearsden Academy Primary School to which we were ferried by ‘bus every
school-day morning. It was a two-storey
Victorian building of traditional design at Bearsden Cross.
The classrooms
were ranked round a central hall which was surrounded at first-floor level by a
balcony which gave access to the upstairs classrooms. The playground was
divided into two halves, one for girls, the other for boys, but my only
recollections of play-times are (1) the war-memorial on the other side of the
railings. The angel, bearing a wounded soldier, impressed me as it towered high
in its magnificence, wings spectacularly outstretched. (2) the building squad
constructing a brick flue up the back of the school, in connection presumably
with an upgrade to the heating system. I watched their handiwork as, play-time
by play-time the chimney rose higher. (3) the day I fell and cut my knee. When
I reported this to my father in the evening he told me that, at work, he’d had
a sense at the time of the accident that something had happened to me. This
seemed uncanny and impressive.
There was a
reproduction of a painting hanging on the wall which we passed on our way to
and from Miss Johnstone’s classroom – it showed an inspiring building with a
tall, solid-looking tower dominating a park. I was curious to know the identity
of this edifice, and when I described the picture my parents recognised it as
Glasgow University, with Kelvingrove Park in the foreground. It was I guess the
school’s destination of choice for its abler pupils.
Miss Johnstone
taught Primary 3 in her bright classroom on the ground floor at the front of
the building. She was a Canadian, a warm, caring woman whose disappointed wrath
I incurred only once when I tugged the pony tail belonging to the girl sitting
at the desk in front of mine, which was snaking invitingly in front of me. We
studied Canada: Miss Johnstone brought in a bottle of Maple Syrup and went
round the class, crouching by each of our desks and spooning into our mouths a
sample of the delicious elixir. I don’t recall her wiping the spoon between its
visits to our eager lips. We studied Christopher Columbus, compiling a jotter
with pictures of the famous navigator, information about his relationships with
Spanish royalty and about his spectacular voyage, and drawings of the Santa Maria and her accompanying
vessels. We learned the song, never thereafter to be forgotten, ‘Columbus
sailed the ocean blue in fourteen hundred and ninety two.’ Our take on the
indigenous North American peoples was emphatically traditional.
My other
recollection of Miss Johnstone’s class was of one of the craft projects. Each
of us was given a round piece of robust card about eight centimetres in
diameter (supplied by Dryad, I think) with cardboard spokes radiating out from
the centre. On a cupboard door at the front of the classroom, Miss Johnstone
hung a rainbow of brightly-coloured lengths of wool, with many strands of each
shade. We got to leave our desks, come and choose a length of wool, sit down
again and weave it in and out of the spokes on the card. Once we’d come to the
end of one piece of wool, we could get another – of the same or a different colour – and repeat
the process. The end result was that each of us had a mat decorated with a
bright spectrum of colour, each mat unique. I still recall the thrill of going
to the cupboard door, free to choose wool
of whichever colour I wanted.
Mrs Robertson
was our Primary 4 teacher. Her classroom was in a hutted annexe at the side of
the main building. My only recollection of the five months spent there was the
collection of rose hips, which I believe was to be turned into rose hip syrup,
and sold for some charitable purpose. Each day, kids would turn up with bags of
fruit which were duly weighed by the teacher. I have a feeling that this rose
hip project was competitive – but whether individual pupils were rewarded or
classes I can’t recall. I cheated, because all my rose hip collecting was
carried out by proxy. My father kindly stopped the car on his lunchtime
journeys between two hospitals and gathered the fruit to help a small son who
sadly took this expression of love almost totally for granted.
I remember my
excitement when I heard that a new petrol station, selling what to me was an
unfamiliar brand – Mobil – was to be
opened not far from the school, and it was rumoured that freebies, highly
attractive to eight-year-olds were to be dispensed on the first day of business.
That evening my father drove home via Bearsden, filled up his tank, and on his
return home poured into my outstretched hands a cascade of surprises.
At the end of
the school day those of us from Westerton scrambled on to the buses for home.
One day I climb up the curving stairs and sit down on the top deck.
Accidentally my bare leg touches a girl’s bare leg. I feel the warmth of it and
shiver. That shiver was the first sign of a childhood illness. The next day, I
am in bed with a fever.
My last day at
the school was just before Christmas 1960. At the start of January, the new
Westerton Primary School opened.
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