大象传媒

Maltese Childhood Chap.4

H.M.Dockyard School, Tal-Handak

鈥淭his story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by volunteer Anita Howard from Essex Action Desk CSV on behalf of herself as Anita M. Sackett and has been added to the site with her permission.She fully understands the site's terms and conditions"

Every school day the bus would pick me up and take me to the Dockyard school at Tal_Handak, (an old disused emergency army barracks). All the service men鈥檚 and civilian children attended except a few who went to private schools. The classrooms were small flat topped buildings spread over some fields in the countryside. Our playground was the fields which were bordered by stone walls and prickly pear cactus. In the spring they were covered with yellow flowers which in Portugal are called Bermuda buttercups. The ground was stony so the girls would play at making houses with the stones. We planned the rooms and doorways then built little walls about two stones high making sure we had a kitchen area as well as bedrooms and a main room. We loved this game and even gathered stones in our back yard at home to play the same game. It was even better if we could find a spot that had a large rock or boulder nearby as that could be an upstairs room.

Most of the teachers were Naval Officers. I was in the infant鈥檚 department for two years and liked the teachers bar one who always criticised my drawings and as art was one of my favourite subjects I wasn鈥檛 too happy about that. They wore Naval uniform - white shirts with epaulettes on their shoulders, white shorts and long white socks to the knee. Some of the teachers were women, wives of the officers.
I still have some of my old reports which said I was good at reading and that my writing was neat and I had a good imagination. I remember the old Beacon readers with the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff and the Troll under the bridge. Oh, how I hated those repetitive stories, I wanted to know what happened, not hear the same sentences over and over again.

The school was divided into four Houses. I was in Nelson (red), there was also Drake (blue), Stevenson (green) and White (yellow!) but I don鈥檛 know the origin of the last house. As usual we all competed to win the various awards for athletics, swimming, hockey, cricket and the Study cup. Of course I was too young to be in the team games but I did take part in the school sports day.
It was held at Kalafrana in a big field overlooking the bay. Everyone wore white, skirts for the girls and shorts for the boys with white plimsoles and socks. Girls wore belts in their house colour so mine was red for Nelson House and boys wore a coloured strip down the side of their shorts. My mother said it looked a great sight.
I took part in a flat race and a relay but although I was quite a good runner I only came second. A girl called Emily beat me and she got a prize.
Sadly the magazine said Nelson house came last. However we won the shield for excellence (work) by one point. It states that the junior members had gained many demerits so had lost us many points.
At Kalafrana we could often see aircraft carriers waiting out in the bay.

Every morning we had a school assembly in the hall. Sometimes it was very hot and I can remember a boy fainting with the heat. In the Maltese winter which was much warmer than an English winter, my mother made me wear a vest and petticoat which I hated so when I reached school. I took it off and stuffed it in my satchel. Luckily we missed the very bad winter of 1947 when Britain had very bad snow falls.

I was a very anxious child and worried about learning my tables by heart, doing multiplication and division sums and also learning the 鈥淟ord鈥檚 Prayer. When I returned to England I was put in the 鈥淏鈥� class鈥� but after two weeks I was promoted to the 鈥淎鈥� class because I could do division with remainders so it was worth the effort.

At Christmas time the school put on a performance for the parents. The first year I was chosen to recite 鈥淛ack and Jill鈥�. I was Jill and a boy was Jack. My mother made me a green dirndl skirt with coloured braid and I had to wear woollen plaits. We both held the pail.
The following year only girls with long hair were chosen for the play as they had their hair combed over the front of their faces and then wore a mask on the back of their head. Goodness knows what they did!

When I was seven I was allowed to join the school Brownie Pack. It was held after school and then a bus would drop me off in Valetta where my mother would meet me with my little sister. We had a white uniform for the summer and brown for the winter but my mother could not afford the two so I only had the white uniform. This I wore with a yellow tie and I was in the 鈥渆lf鈥� six. We also wore sunhats with a brown hat band for summer and a brown beret for winter. We took several badges. The one I remember was for sewing on buttons. I still sew a mean button.

A boy in my class broke a toy sword that I had taken for a play. His father replaced it with a beauty which he had made. The blade was painted silver and the hilt was carved so it was very lifelike. It remained in our fancy dress box for years.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.