大象传媒

Schooldays in London from September 1943 by Brenda Cowell

When I went to Godolphin and Latimer School, some classes were held in shelters. Part of the school was at Newbury with some of the staff 鈥渇or the duration鈥�. The London鈥檚 school gym was bombed, and later, when I was older and cycled to school, I left my bike in the gym. PE was held in the hall, with vaulting horses and balancing beams kept in adjacent classrooms.
We were lucky that the 鈥渇ield鈥� hadn鈥檛 been ploughed up and we had room for a full-size hockey pitch and 2 netball courts 鈥� doubling in summer for tennis courts and rounders pitches.

School notebooks were carefully checked to ensure that no pages were unfilled before new ones were issued. The school dinner ladies did their best, but the quality of the food was poor. A lot of the school uniform was second-hand and my winter coat came from an Army Surplus store 鈥� a Wren coat actually!. Hockey boots were ordinary shoes that the shoemaker fitted with studs. I was lucky (Dad worked at Barkers) and I had pre-war navy-blue knickers. This meant that I had elastic in the legs 鈥� yes, legs!! This meant that I could tuck them up when playing hockey. Others had theirs hanging down. Elastic, among other items, was almost unobtainable. As was loo paper, cut up newspaper was used.

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