.......and you can tell that is is by the number of cars parked all over the place, including on the double yellow lines. And it all reminds me of my own very first day at school all those years ago. Well, 75 years ago to be precise.
At the time, my mother and I were living with an aunt and uncle in the village of Blackfield near Southampton but the school I had to go to was at Fawley, a mile or so away. I suppose it was September 1944 - I had turned five in July - and wartime, of course, but my childhood friends and I were almost blissfully unaware of it all, as wartime was the only thing we had ever known and so that was how life was and we just got on with being children as best we could.
Now for some time before my first day at school, people had been saying things like, "So you`ll be off to school on Monday then" and having heard this a number of times I was convinced that I would be going to school on that Monday.......but perhaps only for that day. It never occurred to me that it was a long term commitment.
Come the day and my mother walked me to Fawley school that day - all the other days I walked there and back on my own. But having been left there and with no idea what it was all about or what was going on, come lunchtime I decided I had had enough and started to walk home. On the way I realise that perhaps I shouldn`t be doing this, so I slowed the pace, took my time and got home at what I imagined to be a sensible time.
Not so, of course. I was met by my astonished mother and I recall her being her usual understanding and sympathetic self, so I wasn`t in too much trouble. Next day, much to my surprise I was sent on my way to school again but this time I took a note from my mother to explain my misdeeds of the day before and - maybe because it was wartime? - I didn`t seem to get into too much bother from the teacher (I think we might have had two of them.)
But I think that formative episode along with my reluctant attendance at all the other schools I ever went to might have been responsible for my natural inclination to buck trends, to question authority and to react instinctively against any form of repression. Maybe, like Forest Gump, I should have just kept on walking.
At the time, my mother and I were living with an aunt and uncle in the village of Blackfield near Southampton but the school I had to go to was at Fawley, a mile or so away. I suppose it was September 1944 - I had turned five in July - and wartime, of course, but my childhood friends and I were almost blissfully unaware of it all, as wartime was the only thing we had ever known and so that was how life was and we just got on with being children as best we could.
Now for some time before my first day at school, people had been saying things like, "So you`ll be off to school on Monday then" and having heard this a number of times I was convinced that I would be going to school on that Monday.......but perhaps only for that day. It never occurred to me that it was a long term commitment.
Come the day and my mother walked me to Fawley school that day - all the other days I walked there and back on my own. But having been left there and with no idea what it was all about or what was going on, come lunchtime I decided I had had enough and started to walk home. On the way I realise that perhaps I shouldn`t be doing this, so I slowed the pace, took my time and got home at what I imagined to be a sensible time.
Not so, of course. I was met by my astonished mother and I recall her being her usual understanding and sympathetic self, so I wasn`t in too much trouble. Next day, much to my surprise I was sent on my way to school again but this time I took a note from my mother to explain my misdeeds of the day before and - maybe because it was wartime? - I didn`t seem to get into too much bother from the teacher (I think we might have had two of them.)
But I think that formative episode along with my reluctant attendance at all the other schools I ever went to might have been responsible for my natural inclination to buck trends, to question authority and to react instinctively against any form of repression. Maybe, like Forest Gump, I should have just kept on walking.
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