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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/books/entry_id/838674-Schooldays-Part-One
Rated: 18+ · Book · Personal · #2025458
A blog not so much for daily activities but to reflect on my past & my experiences.
#838674 added January 15, 2015 at 10:10am
Restrictions: None
Schooldays, Part One
There is a popular myth that, "your schooldays are the happiest days of your life". I'd like to know who perpetrated that myth and give them a piece of my mind. In retrospect, I couldn't wait to get away from school; the day I left was one of the happiest of my life.

I can't recall much about my time in Primary (Elementary) school, although most of the teachers were pretty decent. Bearing in mind I was a Londoner, a primary school camp near Wexford in Ireland was a big deal. We all slept in bell tents which, for most of us was a whole new experience.

I can also recall the news of the death of King George VI in February 1952. We were sitting in the packed dinner hall when the news ran round like a Chinese whisper, but it was perfectly true. The accession of Queen Elizabeth plunged the school, indeed most of the country, into a frenzy of Elizabethanism with numerous projects focused on the so-called "Golden Age" of Elizabeth I.

Among these was the 1953 (my final year in primary school) school play, "The Queen's Emissary" (know to the cynical few as "The Queen's A Misery"). I had a leading role as Senor Luis De Toledo, Governor of Guayaquil in Ecuador in March 1579, who was conned out of a treasure trove by the visiting Francis Drake. I was (and still am) a hopeless actor; to call me wooden would be a compliment. But I had (and still have) a good memory, and could recite a whole list of complicated Spanish names and titles without too much trouble. These plays were always big production numbers to give as many kids as possible some sort of role. This production had twenty nine listed characters.

The culmination of primary schooling in those days was the dreaded "11 Plus" examination which would determine whether you went on to a grammar school or to the Secondary Modern school generally regarded as an educational Siberia. I was lucky - I got to go to a grammar school although only after an interview with the headmaster, about whom more later.

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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/books/entry_id/838674-Schooldays-Part-One