[OLD STEVE] [WORLD OF THE CONTENT] [THE RE-WRITTEN LIST] [LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS] [THE THREE LEVELS]
CHAPTER 5.
School.
MY BIOGRAPHY.
1. I started school during the war and that was a fairly traumatic time.
2. The Second World War had already started and according to my mother schools were obvious targets for enemy bombers and parachutists and whatever other evil would drop out of the sky and totally annihilate us, if we went to unsafe places. In the cupboard or under the bed were safe places and a good choice when the Air-raid Warning sounded. But at school they were building 'proper' air-raid shelters but no one knew if they would be safe. So when the letter arrived informing my parents that a place was available for me at the local school and that I should attend on the stipulated date, you can imagine my mother's panic and my excitement. I was going to school, what ever that meant because I didn't understand much about anything really. The girl who lived opposite also received her notification and in her excitement ran across to tell us and tripped and split her top lip on the pavement edge. I remember the scar still being visible when we were teenagers but it didn't detract from the fact that she turned out to be a very pretty young woman and I often wonder what happened to her. About the same time my, then, young sister got a very similar scar, only this time on her forehead, when she fell off my shoulders and bounced on the same stretch of pavement.
3. As was standard practice, on the morning I was due to go to school, my mother stayed in bed, but I had had my instructions and so I set off, alone and thinking nothing of it. I stood at the gate not being too sure what to do, when the mother of another youngster, who lived close by, grabbed me and pushed me in claiming she had enough to do looking after her own without looking after me. I stood, too frightened to tell her that I was all right, while she told this other woman who I was. This woman shouted at me for not speaking up for myself and told me to tell my mother she should be ashamed of herself for not being with me. That was the start of a long period in my life when I somehow, inexplicably, felt different and despite my best efforts would spend many years of anguish and inner mental torture trying to come to terms with it and fight the fear I felt towards everyone and everything. But that first day didn't end there. I was told later to stand on a chalk mark, on the floor, to say my prayers. That was odd to me because you said your prayers and begged Hitler not to bomb you, at night but I did as I was told. I closed my eyes and someone pushed me off my chalk mark. I pushed them out of the way so that I could do as I had been told and stand on that particular cross. The slap I got and the sting from it, for firstly, not doing as I had been told and secondly, for not closing my eyes, left me with a very low opinion of School Teachers and I have to say, that throughout the rest of my life and up to the present day, the vast majority have done little to alter that opinion or persuade me to change my mind. However to be fair, if one can be fair to a profession dedicated to bullying and unfairness and to a group who have never actually left school themselves; for them it being school, teacher training college and straight back to school, with very little knowledge apart from one or maybe two subjects, studied up to 'A' Level Standard and knowing little else and certainly not being street wise or having any, but the very basics, of anything in the outside world, beyond a smelly classroom, the so called teachers at our village school were, apart from the Headmaster, another complete moron, not teachers. They were the wives of the village shopkeeper's, traders and original teachers, conscripted to serve in the armed forces. Bless them all, for between them, they were the major cause of my having to spend a tremendous amount of my own free time, much later, teaching myself to read properly and efficiently, re-learn how to write correctly and to spell. The latter I still struggle with to this day, but I will accept my share of the responsibility and admit I might not have had the capacity to take it in. But fear of ones teachers and surroundings is a hindrance to learning and the development of self-confidence and before you choose to argue or debate the point, please note that I went on to study human behaviour in some depth and detail later and can not over emphasize the effects that fear has on human behaviour and understanding. The teaching profession does not have to defend itself as mine is but one opinion and is based purely on my own experiences; sadly they were not good. However I might not be alone as only recently someone is reputed to have said that the first thing they give a School Teacher is a job they can't do, pay them silly money for making a mess of it and send a Blind Education Minister and his guide dog, (year 2000) to 'see' how they are getting on. We only had dried up old bags; who pulled and pushed us everywhere and punished us for the most obscure reasons. At least today it would appear that in some areas if the kids are fed up or dissatisfied with school they can burn it down with little fear of retribution. Those same options may have been available to us but somehow it was just not the done thing in those days. We hoped Hitler would do it for us.
4. From my Infant and Junior School days I have mixed memories, not many of them happy. I was never allowed to accept invitations to Birthday Parties because all the people who had birthdays were not the type of people we wanted to mix with, neither could we afford presents, unless we used our own money, which was never above a few pennies, otherwise my mother took it off us. But our own birthdays were very special. We would have a special tea, without father, who never ate with the children, except on Sundays and that would be agony and we would inevitably end up crying after being flicked on the back of the hand, once too often, with the flat of his dinner knife and them mother would cry and someone would end up in bed early. I think we got a present; yes we must have because despite the fact that I can't remember any of them, I do remember always having to share with my sister. As a youngster I never got anything that was ever exclusively mine, except perhaps the good hidings which my mother was good at, but never my father who to achieve his ends had only to shout at my mother and she would do the necessary. My father only ever hit me twice and both times I hated him for it, for I didn't think it was justified, neither then nor now. We might come back to that later.
5. I remember collecting Cigarette Packets and Bus numbers. Pretending to be buses and spending hours 'driving' round the school playground. In and out of Air-raid Shelters and jumping up at the school windows when the sirens sounded and airplanes went over and being blamed for one youth catching his belly button on a coat hook when I pulled him down to get a better look. Although, to this day I don't know why I deserved to be hit for it and sent home only to be hit again, for being sent home, and told to go back and then spending the rest of the day, until home time, hiding behind a wall, crying all day and wondering what I had done. Sweets were rare, in those days, and I never learnt, so when each time I took some to school, I had them taken off me by the older boys. But I didn't really mind because then they would let me play with them, but only during that play time, and that was great because no one else could 'get me' and it was the lesser of two evils, as I learnt, when once I reported to a teacher that I had had my sweets taken off me only to receive a good slap, from the old cow, for telling tales. The same old bag would stand over us at lunch time and cram every last little bit of the revolting stuff they served up, usually cold, called School Dinners. They were cheap and in the days of food rationing were a useful way of getting extra food into kids. School milk was also free and there was no way I could drink fresh milk so I enjoyed being sick and being hit and shouted at for it, until every new teacher got round to demanding a note from my mother, who could never see why she should have to write one when they should know by the fact that I was sick, that I didn't drink milk. Explain that to a child. There were lots of tears and injustice in those early days and to this day I still don't drink milk and find even the smell of it revolting. I don't eat many sweets but when I do I tend to select for myself the single items that don't have to be shared and I rarely accept offered sweets unless it's from a grandchild who maybe offended by a refusal. I steer well clear of all fancy food and stick to the familiar home cooked fare that I know I can rely on. I hate eating-out, eat little meat, as I never really knew what it was as a child because any that came our way, in those days, my father ate. I remember eating a lot of 'new' potatoes and 'green' peas, as we grew them and they were plentiful.
6. There was a garden attached to the school and we spent hours digging and producing vegetables for the Headmaster and his 'staff'. Next to that there was a Mill, with a dam, or pond as it was known locally and where we went for Frog Spawn and Newts in summer and to slide on the ice in winter. Until it gave way, that is, and then you hoped you would dry out before 'home time.' We also played on the haystack, kept to feed the horses, in the council yard on the other side and stood and peed over the high boundary wall. We went on top of the Air-raid shelters, when we thought we might get away with it, and looked down into the girls toilets, until shouted at and called all sorts of names, most of which I did not understand. It was all right for the Headmaster to stand in one of the upper windows and look down but I suppose he only did that in order to catch us?
7. Every now and again, though never me because I was too scared, 'someone' would set the grass banks on fire behind the school and I would inevitably take my chance against the wroth of my mother and go home late from school, having earned a shilling, paid by the local fire brigade, for having helped beat it out.
There is little else that I recall from infants school apart from the fact that I learnt, at an early age, that I didn't particularly like girls as they told tales and were always believed and I, in some way or another would end up getting punished for it. In those days my sister was fiercely loyal but then she shared the problems at home.
