Still trying to get to grips with this blogging business. I am a bit of a Technophobe and a bit old to be learning new skills.

My brother David and I have been sharing memories of our time at Hough Green School as we called it. Both of us were to leave at the age of seven so we are thinking back to being five or six. It is amazing what memories do resurface after nearly 70 years.

School dinners came in big metal containers from elsewhere. I hated them , especially the mashed potato which was full of ‘purple lumps’ . Most of my dinner went in the food bin, I’m afraid. Luckily I did like the free milk that we got, mid-morning in little third of a pint bottles.

The school building was one big classroom, divided into three by glass screens which could be opened up to make a bigger space. The infants were taught in the biggest room which had the fireplace. I think there was a staff room but we never saw it. The building is now a social club and has piles of beer kegs outside where we used to play!

We were a church school so we would go through a gate from the playground into the churchyard and into church. Neither of us remembers doing sports but beyond the church was the field used for the June Fair and I suspect we probably went there.

The maypole was used in the school playground and we did country dancing there, too but sports I have no memory of. Vague memories come to mind of a wind up gramophone which provided the music for the dancing.

My Teacher in the infants was probably Mrs Jeffs, a friend of our Mother’s. We had things like the days of the week and the seasons on wooden labels on the wall and every day someone had the special job of deciding what to have on the weather indicator. I think we used plasticine which I enjoyed, although it was disappointing when the individual colours merged into a uniform mucky grey colour.

My Teacher in Class Two was Mrs Boardman and she gave me a life-long love of Enid Blyton as every day before home time she read us a Rubalong story. She sat up high in a special Teacher’s desk, looking down on us all. Her stand alone blackboard looked enormous to me but then I suppose I was quite small.

I have tried to remember names of other pupils but apart from David Sharples who heard a cuckoo in Owlers Wood which apparently meant that it was Spring, not many come to mind. Brenda Winskill was probably one as she was born at the same time as me at Highfield Road Maternity Home in April 1946.

Sadly I don’t remember the name of the boy who brightened our day by getting his head stuck in the railings, either, but the fire brigade came and rescued him.

I did agree to marry one lad who I played ‘houses’ with in the playground, breaking all the rules. In later years he turned up working in the mens’ department of Calverts’ Department Store but I didn’t hold him to his promise of marriage. He was only six, after all!

The best part of the school day for me was the walk to school, up the hill, over the railway bridge, past Hough Green station with its beautiful floral displays and the Hammer and Pincers pub and in at the school gates.

I loved the hedgerows with all the wild flowers in summer and red berries in winter. There was cow parsley (Mother’s Die – Don’t take any home to your Mother or she will! ) and there were dandelions with clocks to blow and birds which sang to us as we passed. They had nests with eggs in and the songs were probably warnings to stay away. I really enjoyed living in the country and going to school there but all this was soon to change.