THE HAPPIEST DAYS ?...

Hearing a lot at the moment about whether schools should close or remain open due to the rising cases of corona virus.  As ever with this pandemic, there are arguments both ways and as attending school is not as high on my agenda as it was in my own school days, I will refrain from entering into the current debate.

Nonetheless, it has rekindled memories of  about 75 years ago when I attended Hythe Primary School - pictured above - in my boyhood village on the shores of Southampton Water.  Just after the end of WW2 when my father returned home from five years as a prisoner of war, we moved to Hythe from nearby Blackfield where I had attended my very first days at Fawley school.  I settled in to Hythe school quite quickly, soon made new friends and enjoyed not just the school but more particularly the out of school activities - with the shoreline down the end of our garden and the New Forest up the road, who wouldn`t?

But when I was about seven, I developed a serious kidney disease - nephritis - and I found myself in Southampton Children's Hospital for about six weeks, after which I went home but had to stay in bed until a relapse saw me return for another stay in hospital.  It went on a bit but eventually I recovered, however by the time I went back to Hythe school, I had lost a whole year`s schooling.  (Not sure I minded too much as there were elements of my absence that I still recall, for example my mother wheeling me around the village in a wheelchair and being on good terms with the family doctor.)  Here`s a map from the time that shows how my boyhood village used to be:-

 Looking back, I realise now that missing a year`s school probably held me back - I failed the 11+ having been driven by my father to Brockenhurst School for the exam - and I began to develop a genuine distaste - a fear even - of the compulsion of having to go to school at all.  My first secondary school was at Hardley, next to Fawley - so I was Hardley educated there; and once we moved to south London when I was about 13 my disaffection with school was complete and I couldn`t wait to leave.

But in order to get on with life there was a choice - grumble about it and feel `disadvantaged` or try to catch up and do something about it.  I chose the latter, which is a different story altogether which I won`t bore you with here.  But it does mean that there is yet another reason for the virus that is blighting all our lives to be defeated in that the schoolchildren of today won`t have to miss as much of school as I did.  Moreover, I hope too that they realise, unlike me, that their school days are the most important ones of their lives and that, again unlike some of mine, they might turn out to be the happiest.