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In the early days of the war schooling was a bit erratic. I was already in school, aged nearly 8 years. Our local Infants School in Manor Park, East London, closed for a while; many children had been evacuated and many teachers had also been evacuated with them. Classes were arranged for the children who stayed at home; these were held in one house in each avenue, and we had to attend either a morning or afternoon session. I don’t remember if this was a daily thing or something that happened several times a week. However, I don’t think I learnt much.

When things settled down a bit schools re-opened. We had an air-raid shelter built in the playground but as it was above ground and not very sturdy I doubt if it would have saved anyone from a bomb. Sometimes when there was a warning we had to sit in the shelter, singing songs to keep our spirits up. I only remember that it was dark and damp and a bit smelly.

Paper was in short supply and I remember that we were issued with small blackboards and chalk on which to do our writing and arithmetic etc. We also had small spongy rubbers to clean the board when it was full. These provided us with lots of fun when we discovered that if you waited until it was full of chalk dust, you could bang it hard on the desktop of your classmates and cause them to practically disappear in a cloud of chalk dust!

School dinners were introduced at some time during the war – partly to help mothers who had to work whilst their husbands were away in the services and partly to help stretch the rations at home. My mother enrolled my younger brother Howard who by this time had started school, and me, to stay for these dinners. There were no kitchens in school in those days and no proper dining room – meals were eaten at the desks which had sloping tops, which could be a messy business if your gravy trickled over the edge of the plate. I suppose the food was brought in from somewhere, ready cooked. I was quite happy with this arrangement as I really enjoyed my food. However, my brother was a bit fussy and the crunch came one day when we were served with Macaroni Cheese, a dish which we had never had before. My brother refused to eat it and sat with big fat tears running down his cheeks. I cried in sympathy and that was our last school dinner – after that we went home each day, as before.

Later when I was in school and having school meals again we were often given Orange Juice Jelly on our puddings. This was presumably to give us a good source of vitamins. Unfortunately, it was so concentrated that it practically took the skin off the inside of your mouth, unless you could mix it with your glass of water, then it wasn’t too bad. We also had to drink one third of a pint of milk each day. I have always disliked milk and this was a real trial for me, especially in the very cold weather when the small bottles would arrive in the classroom with their lids lifted up about half an inch on the frozen milk. Then we had to put them on the radiators until they were melted enough to get a straw into the milk.

The journey to school, about fifteen minutes walk, could be quite exciting sometimes. To reach our school we had to cross one of the main routes to Woolwich Ferry and quite often there would be convoys of lorries, tanks, guns, etc. en route for various places. If we noticed a couple of motorbike outriders cross the traffic lights in the direction of Woolwich, we would linger on our side of the road until the convoy proper appeared. Then we were able to cheer and wave at all the servicemen as they passed by. Sometimes the tanks tore up the surface of the road quite badly, with their caterpillar tracks. Of course, we were never told off for being late for school on these occasions.

Later still in school I remember the teachers had to measure our feet each term, and if they were over a certain length you could claim extra clothes coupons to make sure you could get shoes that fitted you properly. We were lucky enough to have a neighbour who would let us know when the shop she worked in was due for a delivery of children’s shoes. My parents were scrupulously honest and would have nothing to do with the Black Market but they were grateful for that information.

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