A POEM FOR MY GRANDDAUGHTER
I became 12 at the end of ’53.
That year we had bought our first TV
(with a 9 inch screen) to watch the Queen
being crowned. Just in time for the crowning
the British – with some help – had ‘conquered’
Everest. That September I had started
at the grammar school which had been founded
by Henry VIII after he had robbed
the local monastery. The masters
were begowned, the corridors stone-lined, dark.
Placing the sides of our blue and green striped caps
equidistant from our ears – as per
the British obsession with school uniform –
we would take the short walk through the city
to a Georgian building that had been
a charity school. There we had science
and ‘dinners’. Next door was a brewery.
As we lit the Bunsen burners, and ate
the grisly meat and semolina,
we could smell the pungent brewing of hops.
We were forbidden to eat in the street.
At some point I had lost my sense of humour,
had forsaken The Beano and The Dandy –
with their roll-calls of impromptu anarchists,
like Dennis the Menace and Korky the Cat –
for The Eagle, and its square-jawed, upper class,
Scottish space hero, Colonel Dan Dare,
and his fat batman, Digby, who came from Yorkshire.
That summer I had read Enid Blyton’s,
‘The Famous Five Have A Wonderful Time’,
knowing that it would probably be
the last time I read such a book, that
my childhood was ending, and being grown up
was approaching – sometimes like a huge iceberg,
sometimes like an imminent, hoped-for
landfall on a fragrant coast that was just
over the horizon.
Sarah Selzer
March 25, 2022I turned to this one first of course! As always, such striking imagery and, as always, I learned something. (I didn’t know about the brewery!) Being 12 in 1953 or in 2022, you know it all, of course, but still want to hang onto childhood pleasures. (it’s amazing that Dennis and his pals still gain the attention of the TikTok generation!). Then you think of a 12 year old in Kyiv, fleeing from everything and everyone they know. It’s unimaginable. xxx
Mike Rogerson
March 25, 2022Enjoyed this trip down the school memory lane, David. Don’t forget the Mekon!
Ian Craine
March 25, 2022Indeed all sorts of memories, David. The Bluecoat, home, in my first one and a bit years at King’s, to Gordon Orry’s art room and Taffy Evans’s biology lab. I guess the other science labs were also there. Two boys shared each Bunsen burner, test tubes and flasks. Gomer Davies, the Welsh chemistry teacher, catch phrase “Don’t wait for me, chaps” with his novel teaching methods that had to be temporarily jettisoned for a School Inspection.
And, yes, the smell of Northgate Brewery, the sweet malt smell I loved even as a child, not far from my Dad’s shop. I still have one of their bottles, pale green. Greenall Whitley took the brewery over, I recall, and it was they who probably closed it and transferred operations to Warrington.
An ‘aunt’, i.e. a friend of my mother’s, sent me weekly copies of the Dandy till I was 15 when my mother told her I was too old for such stuff. I was mortified; this was so much more fun than the ‘heroic’ and I’m sure imperialist Eagle.
Kate Harrison
March 27, 2022We also had to walk through the streets of Battersea to a cavernous hall, where overcooked cabbage had been awaiting us since about 9am. There was an unfortunate incident, involving spoon-feeding unwanted cabbage. After that, I went home on the train for lunch. I was 6. I am still friends with my crocodile partner.
Ashen Venema
March 28, 2022I was younger then. Our first TV came later.
The Beano and Dennis, and Micky Mouse, as well as Enid Blyton’s Famous Five eventually entered my life. The boys at school liked to quote clever sayings from the characters of the Five, like ‘your mind is as sharp as a knife!’ That was in Bavaria! Wonder what your granddaughter makes of your life then, compared to hers now?
John Huddart
March 28, 2022The disestablishment of the monasteries, turning all those clerics out of doors, is said to have lead to the industrial revolution and the enlightenment in England. All those literate scribes had to do something with their skills, and their freed thoughts! Perhaps they became the first masters in new schools, or their grandchildren did!
Why is it that childhood memories pull so strongly on us as we age? Do we want to return to these happy certainties? There is no escape from them, and as our brains weaken, their nearness becomes ever sharper.
Lovely poem, with or without the Mekon, Harris Tweed and Sexton Blake.
Mary Clark
March 31, 2022The school uniforms you describe are so different from American schools back then, they seem quaint leftovers from a previous century. But I remember the Bunsen burners and test tubes, Sleeping Beauty, Tweety Bird, Lincoln Logs and Monopoly, and the feeling that I was sailing toward that distant land where all the opportunities waited. I wonder what your grand-daughter will remember? Pokemon (whatever happened to that)? Frozen? Lego?