New School, New Boy

Dressed in a Fairisle pullover, short trousers and Balaclava cap the boy set off to his new school, a secondary school situated some three miles away on the opposite side of the town. That September morning in 1945 he joined some two hundred other pupils of Bridge Street Secondary school in a listless and tuneless rendition of 'There is a green hill far away'. Self consciously mouthing the words he glanced nervously along the ranks looking for familiar faces, there were none and he longed to be back at the primary school. His mother later informed him that he had great difficulty in settling down at this school and wanted to go back to the primary school. That may be so but I have only vague recollections of attending St Stephen’s primary school. I can see a playground, a red Victorian brick building, an air raid shelter and walls with sawn off railing stumps, the latter had been taken for scrap metal to be converted into tanks and cannons. Reluctantly I carried on with the hymn not sure what to make of it. Singing hymns at assembly was my earliest and only involvement with religion, my father wasn't interested and my mother was trying to escape from it. It never seemed to play any part in our family life.

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