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.

.......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.