FIRST DAY AT SCHOOL & THE FEAST

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 5 YEARS OLD

Photo: My Grandad Thompson and I, circa 1954

We lived in Newby (Scarborough, UK) in a street called The Whins, next door to a shop that was built whilst we lived there. This was before we moved out to Eastfield. Our house had a garden in the front with a hedge running between the lawn and the public pavement. I used to sit under this hedge and peer through the leaves and watch "big kids" going to school every day. I wanted to be one of them! They all looked very old - they must have been six or seven, I guess.

My day came, and my mother walked me down the street opposite our house called "The Green" where, at the bottom, stood Newby Infants School. I was full of joy at going to school at last, even though I didn't really know what school was. The joy didn't last, because my mother took me into this huge classroom full of kids I didn't know, and THEN SHE LEFT! Prior to leaving, she told me that I could find my own way home - which wasn't as bad as it sounds, because you could just about see our house from the school.

I remember sitting at this little desk (and it even felt little as a 5 year old) watching all the other kids doing things and running around. I was doing nothing. Suddenly from nowhere, a grown-up lady (the teacher) handed me a book and it was painting by numbers and she showed me that by putting water onto the numbers, the colours would show. I'd never seen this before. It was absolute magic to me. So that's what I did for most of the morning, until a bell rang and all the other kids ran to the front of the class and started drinking milk from little bottles. I remained seated, not sure whether I should join them or not. As the minutes rolled by, I became scared because I didn't know what was going on - so I just sat there! I didn't get any milk on the first day. It was only later in the day that one of the little school girls whispered that the milk was free, it happened every day at 10am and I was allowed to join the others.

The day rolled by, and I became friends with a boy called William. He wanted to know if I'd like to go to a feast; not a word I was particularly familiar with. After school, I followed William to his house, which was halfway up the hill to my house. While I waited outside in a sort of covered porch entrance, he went inside to 'fetch the feast.' Now to a 5 year old, this could have been anything from a box of frogs to an elephant. What was this thing called a feast?

After what seemd like ages, William came back out of the house with something wrapped up in white tissue paper. When he unfolded it, it was a full-size fresh unsliced bread loaf. He'd 'stolen it' from inside the house. This was to be our feast. We sat in the porchway and ate most of it! I remember thinking that the soft white bread in the centre was delicious. Then I went home.

My mother asked where I'd been because I was late, but I was too scared to mention the feast and instead told her that I was late because some of the numbers in my colouring book didn't work at school, and I had to wait until the colours came through. I think this might have been the day I told my first fib, too.