I am still trying to work out how to do this blog. I want to write it before all my memories disappear. I was born in 1946 in Highfield Road Maternity Home, next door to the Wade Deacon. In 1970 I gave birth to my first son in the same establishment. More of that experience later. Let’s get back to my first years at the Grammar School.
We wore white shirts and ties with a blazer and a dark coloured skirt. Everyone had to wear their beret on the journey to and from school. These were not very attractive items of headware. You could fold it into four, of course and use hairgrips to stick it to your head so that, technically you were ‘wearing’ it! We hated them.
Skirts had to be a reasonable length and cover our knees but some girls would roll them up at the waist so that they got shorter as the day went on. In the summer we wore rather nice pale blue cotton dresses with white spots. I was lucky enough to inherit some from my older friend, Avril who had some specially made ones with a more attractive design.
In those days we would rinse our net underskirts in sugar to stiffen them but I don’t think we wore them to school. You would be followed by a swarm of interested insects if you did! No jewellery was allowed or make up and the rules were strictly applied. There was the odd renegade.
We were very conscious of the fact that the boys were very close but separated by invisible lines. The playground was shared but you weren’t supposed to associate with the opposite sex. Hence that wonderful concept – ‘Ath Prac’. Basically this gave one the ability to jog round the school field after school, in your PE kit of course but in association with the boys. The only risk was getting picked for an event on Sports Day. I did the High Jump but I wasn’t as good as my brother who held the record for Cheshire at one point.
The invisible line between the sexes also existed upstairs, outside the Art Room (Room 52). The door was always open so the boys were visible to us but one was not allowed to communicate in any way. I think more than a few paper aeroplanes made their way across the ‘border’.
Sports day was, from memory, always a joint effort with both girls and boys taking part. The ladies on the staff would treat it like Ascot and appear wearing posh hats and dresses.
Another opportunity for mixing with the opposite sex (In those days there were only two) was to go to Scientific Society which was held in the boys’ school. Having got ourselves ready we were able to cross the invisible line on the top corridor and walk to the boys’ lab where we could watch demonstrations of ‘How not to blow yourself up’ etc. Brilliant!
The main occasion for fraternisation was the Christmas Social, of course and for several weeks before that the dreaded ‘Soc Pracs’ (Social Practices) where the teachers attempted to teach us the dances we would do at the social. Who can forget the scottish lilt of Jock Learmonth, the boys’ PE teacher, as he asked us to ‘Take your partners, please.’ My heart still sinks as I type the words!
You may be wondering if any work got done as most of my description of school life above seems to be boy-based. It must have taken place but I don’t remember much about it.
HUNTINGFORD MATTERS 