A life in letters: school dinners

When I was at Primary School in Carluke, I went home at lunchtime. My mother gave me lunch, a comic (on the days the Dandy and Beano were published) and (on Wednesdays) some last-minute tuition in grammar prior to the dreaded afternoon session. Sometimes when I was leaving the house to walk back to school, my father would be returning from the hospital for his own lunch – if he saw me further along Douglas Street he’d drive along to say ‘Hi!’ and sometimes, at my request, try to judge from the car’s speedometer how fast I was running.

At the start of my 1st year at Wishaw High School I bought my dinner tickets on Monday morning from Mrs Costley in the back office which opened directly off the playground and had my lunch in the canteen. The girls entered, and sat at one end of this long, prefabricated building, the boys at the other. There was room for eight people at each table, four at each side. I think we were free to choose any free space, but senior pupils occupied the seats adjacent to the corridor while those in lower years sat closer to the window. The seniors would appoint one of the younger boys to go to the hatch for the food and plates, and I think to tidy the table afterwards.  

Most days, there was a main course and a pudding, accompanied by custard in a battered pink metal jug in which, inevitably, a skin had formed. I loved the days when there was soup instead of pudding, because it was accompanied by shortbread, and for me the combination of sweetness and the savoury taste of the soup was irresistible. Not everyone shared my delight, and often I was able to have someone else’s piece of shortbread as well as my own. But normally it was the seniors who dished out lunch from the ceramic tureen on to the plates – and in my experience their perception of division by eight was rarely equitable. 

The canteen environment was noisy and cheerful. Someone must have had the surname ‘Cater’ because I recall the shout ‘Cater the waiter’ when it was this boy’s turn to go to the hatch. And someone else’s physiological abnormality was rather unkindly celebrated in his shouted nickname ‘Mono’ and sometimes in the phrase ‘Mono is having a ball!’  Tables were thumped loudly in response to the sound of dropped crockery smashing on the concrete floor.

I must have found all this somewhat intimidating, although I don’t recall any particular incidents of bullying in the canteen, and must have voiced my concerns to my father, because he decided to give me money to go into Wishaw town centre for lunch. This was common among less-conformist pupils – on Wednesdays I would join a crowd of WHS pupils at the Wimpy Bar, or the café near the station, or the cafeteria at Wishaw Baths. On Wednesdays, Bairds’ department store was closed so I had to me more adventurous. Bairds was where I normally ate at lunch time, all alone, the only school pupil in the restaurant. And I liked it that way.