Packing a bag to return to England for a week, Mr Britten came to mind.
Mr Britten was headmaster of our two teacher primary school for the last term I was there. He was very different from his predecessor, he drove a bright orange ‘K’ registered car, the most up to date registration possible in the spring of 1972. He played the piano with one finger and much humour and he was very fond of reading. At the end of the day he would read to the whole class, the …
‘We are all familiar with the way that certain smells evoke certain memories, you catch the scent of something and it brings to mind a particular image. I was going to use the example of the way Jeyes Fluid reminds me of our primary school toilets but I didn’t think it would be an appropriate illustration for this church sermon’. The congregation have still not quite adjusted to my attempts at levity. ‘Instead of Jeyes Fluid, perhaps we could think of the power of the scent of candles to bring …
The River Nore is in flood north of the city of Kilkenny. As if the past year had not been difficult enough for the farming community, acres and acres of land along the river’s banks are now under dirty brown water. The scene resembled the landscape of my home area, the Somerset levels, in the middle of winter; the water there would sometimes lie for weeks, its retreat in the spring perhaps contributing to the county being named the ‘summer lands’.
As if thoughts of Somerset could mysteriously transmit themselves …
There were twelve at Holy Communion this evening – three of them teachers; well, two retired teachers and one student teacher. Between them, how many lives would be shaped by their work? Primary school teachers are a special sort of person.
Arriving in her blue Ford Anglia each morning, bespectacled and stern, our infant teacher Miss Everitt took education seriously. There was never homework, but there was hardly need for it. The school day for infants ran from 9.15 until 3.30. Apart from breaks, the day was filled with active …
Driving from Bristol airport, the car thermometer said that it was 14 degrees outside; the rain came in squalls and the cars drove with headlights lit. It took the traffic bulletin on BBC Radio 2 to be reminded that it was the August bank holiday Monday.
The August bank holiday marked the end of the summer holidays during childhood days; a harbinger of doom, it announced the imminent onset of a new school year. Perhaps it was also the time when the return of the darkness became apparent.
Standing in …
Forty years ago today, it was the first day of the summer holidays. High Ham Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School closed for the six weeks of summer holiday on Friday, 21st July 1972.
There was no school bell, just the quiet words of the teacher telling the class they could go.
The occasion went unmarked by any ceremony or observance; it went, for the most part, without comment. Seven of the class of twenty or so would not return in September: a fact that was as unremarkable as …
