Making Friends

By Beryl Turner

Why was I here I this big, old building that had a funny smell about it…..old wood, polish, chalk, cooked cabbage; where the windows were so big and tall you couldn’t see outside. I wanted to be at home with my new baby sister. I wanted to cry but my mam had told me not to, that I was a big girl now that I was 5. I was starting school. A new kilt and hand knitted jumper was my uniform and because it was January and very cold, I wore a liberty bodice on top of my vest to keep warm together with long grey stockings which were held up sometimes by sometimes by suspenders which were attached to the liberty bodice or by homemade elastic garters. When we did PE or dancing, we did it in bare feet so off came the stockings and the garters. The garters often used to get lost which meat that when I came to putting the stockings back on they wouldn’t stay up and ended up around my ankles which made my mam cross when she saw me coming out of school. These stockings were very itchy and I spent a lot of time scratching my legs at school. I was always pleased when the warmer days arrived and the dreaded stockings could be changed for ¾ beige socks.

My School days were fairly happy in the summer when me and my friends played with our skipping ropes in the yard but not so good in the winter when the classrooms seemed darker and smellier with the wet coats and socks drying on old radiators after they had got wet playing in the snow. And because the old, smelly toilets were outside and quite a long way from the classroom, you were often made to wait until playtime if you needed the toilet which was sometimes hard, especially for some of the boys (and girls) who still wet their pants or knickers making the classroom even smellier!

But….I did meet my childhood best friend, Penny, on my first day at school. We have stayed in touch for nearly 65 years and have shared many happy memories, so starting Chillingham Road Infants School wasn’t so bad after all!