Labels

Saturday 13 February 2016

LOOKING BACK


I popped into a bookshop in town the other day and found this absolutely super book.



Now I know that Miss Read books are light reading and some may not get it, but I have loved them ever since I discovered them when I was about 16 and first got some money of my own after starting to work full time.  Back then you could pick one up for 55 pence.  But then again, as I only used to earn £6 a week as a shorthand typist, I suppose it is all relative.


Dora Saint alias Miss Read died in 2012, and I believe I have just about all of her books.  Firstly the cover illustrations have always been just beautiful and secondly, from the very beginning, I realised that she was actually writing about my school life in the 1950's.


This is a photo of my primary school and, as in Miss Read's books, it was a 2 teacher school run by a husband and wife who lived in the School House next door, shown below.



We had just 2 classrooms, the little room under the tuition of Mrs B from age 4 to 7 and the big room run by Mr B from age 7 to 11 when we sat the 11+ exam to determine which school we would move on to in the town.

There was a concrete playground at the back with a climbing frame and to go to the toilet, you crossed the playground to the girls' facilities in the left hand corner and the boys in the right.

We had two cloakrooms, one for each classroom with wash basins and cold water, and there was a canteen where meals were cooked every day by ladies from the village.

We had little bottles of milk each morning, which were always stored just outside the front door and therefore in summer the milk was often slightly warm and in winter, very often about half ice with the tops popped off the bottles as it froze and expanded.  Still it didn't seem to do us any harm - we were all fairly hale and hearty.  We didn't worry about things like health and safety then - there was just common sense.

There were around 23 pupils in the whole school at any particular time and for physical education we we played with bean bags and quoits and did exercises in the playground, and on summer Friday afternoons we walked to the village green to play cricket - the ground was very rough and nothing like a real pitch.

Whenever I feel like a comforting and feel good read, I still turn to Miss Read, and am really looking forward to reading Mrs Griffin Sends Her Love which has been published since Dora Saint's death and contains her thoughts and writings which she produced before publishing her first book about the village of Fairacre called Village Diary.

I would just like to say, "Thank You Miss Read for the hours of pleasure you have given to me over the years."

More posts will be popping up about my country childhood which I hope you will enjoy reading.

This is not a sponsored post in any way - I just absolutely love these books.

Hoping your weekend is cosy and warm.

Ruth.




























No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you so much for all your comments - I try to read them all and am really grateful for the support and inspiration you give to me.