Melvyn & Sharron Pearson |Tandragee|Co Armagh BT62

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I have little recall of my first few years of existence but can remember my first days at school at the very tender age of four and a bit, I commenced my education at Mullavilly Primary School in 1959 where I remained in instruction and erudition until 1966.

 My first teacher was a Miss McClelland, a straight laced, flat chested woman from an age long gone, well it seemed to me like that, who taught by having us constantly in parrot like fashion recite tables, alphabet, spellings and indeed everything scholastic had to be repeated over and over again. Sometimes this recitation was of a competitive and cut throat nature as all and sundry tried to out shout and surpass their contemporaries while being conducted and orchestrated by Miss McClelland pounding on the desk with a bamboo cane.  A cane that you would see the actor Jimmy Edwards using in the old black and white Billy Bunter movies, shaped like a walking stick but its wispiness could deliver a sharper pain to one’s palm or posterior if the offence warranted a stiffer penalty. This switch was a double-edged weapon; pardon the pun, which was used to strike and invoke terror while learning and reciting and to administer pain when learning failed to register in the old noggin.

  Miss McClelland always wore a check, pleated dress, white blouse and a navy blue cardigan or at least that is how I remember her.  I can also remember wondering why she had no bosom to speak off, although I never aired these views to my classmates.  Seems like strange thoughts for a boy of four and a bit but there you go to quote Patrick Kielty.  I can still smell the lead from the thick pencils we used, as the biro was not yet invented, well I had never seen one. There was a pencil sharpener bolted to Miss’s desk and there were frequent trips by all and sundry, all except that is the very sagacious and learned to the front to sharpen your pencil.  This was whether you pencil needed sharpening or not.  Life expectancy of the Primary One pencil was short and the emptying of the Sharpener’s waste receptacle was frequent. That is probably why I can still smell that lead pencil bouquet which reminds me of my Tom Sawyer Days in that last year of the real Rock n’ Roll era ’59.

 Discipline in class was of an authoritarian and martial like nature and punishment was swift and harsh.  Humiliation was common with the less academic souls having to stand in the corner of the classroom facing inwards away from us goody two shoed pupils, who had not been apprehended and sentenced.  This denunciation seemed to last hours. It was ‘’worsened’’ if you were sent outside the door instead of the corner torture where the headmaster might, just might, discover you and roar his retribution. You could always skive off to the toilets to negate this chance meeting but then probability would have it Miss McClelland would come to end the sentence and repatriate you to the class. Being brought to the front of class to sit directly in front of her was also a frequent event for the more audible Primary clientele.

  I mentioned toilets, we did not have the plush radiator heated latrines that are today’s school ablutions, no ours was outside and consisted of a four walled construction with no roof, an urinal, which was a channel in the concrete floor and a set of two or three pots for major ablutions, which I think had a roof.  Next-door was the girls’ equivalent, which I imagined was the same layout, as I never dared to peek, although some of the bigger more daring pupils did, by climbing on the walls and peering down through the space where the roof should have been.  A black wrought iron gate of the jail variety secured both toilets.  In fact these gates were used as a retention device by our school elders using these very gates to intern us, as was our atonement for being the new scholars just setting out on the academic highway of life.  Many a morning break and lunch time were spent peering through the bars of our toilet cell at our captors who seemed to take turns at keeping the gate shut and authorising access and exit for their elk to come and go and perform the bodily function as we suffered the humility of taunts and the stench of stale urine. But after a couple of weeks this game ceased and us neophytes were allowed access to the playground but only the perimeter of said playground, as football was a priority and we were too young. In summer cricket encompassed the totality of the playground, so the girls and the very young and the non sportier and plumper pupils were restricted to the grass boundaries running along both sides the playground or could run up and down the slope that led from the school to the playground or finally an option was to run round and round the immediate school building perimeter non stop for the duration of your break.  This seemed like a favoured pastime of the girls and sometimes developed into chasing as it was known or tig where the words ‘’your on it’’ echoed around the school.  Skipping and Hop Scotch also played a major part of the play activity.  Other games included, One, Two, Three Red Light, and Simon Says. In winter when the snow fell, slides were constructed on the aforementioned slopes where all the brave or stupid depending on how you look at it, sprinted 10 to 15 yards and launched themselves down the slope. I can remember ‘’putting the ass’’ out of my trousers on this manmade ski slope and having to wear a long coat the remainder of the day to hide my embarrassment. It seemed the slope was enormous but on revisiting the school in later years it was about eight feet long, hardly Eddie the Eagle stuff.
 

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CHILDHOOD MEMORIES & SCHOOL DAYS