大象传媒

This is a continuation of the account of my stay on the Farm in Draycott-in-the Clay.
Once a week I borrowed a bike belonging to one of the farm labourers and biked to Sudbury to Hancock's shop to fetch the extra cheese ration which farmers were allowed. Was this for the 'Ploughman's Lunch'? I believe we bought this cheese from Hancock's because they sold very tasty Cheddar. It was the only item Pat had from there.
All the meat came from DeVilles' in Uttoxeter, and they sold very good sausages as well which we always had for sunday breakfast.
Going to Uttoxeter involved a journey on Wheeldons' bus. We didn't go every week because the meat, like the bread, was delivered to the big farm and Jack would bring them back to the cottage.
Now and then Pat would manage a trip to Uttoxeter, usually for shoes for the boys, or knitting wool, or other essentials. On these occasions we took the three boys - always on a Saturday - and if funds ran to it Pat would buy us a cream bun, a 'Devon Split' from Wheeldons' cafe, where we waited for the bus home. I say 'cream bun' but it was ersatz cream. Pat would have a cup of tea - three pence a cup; I believe the buns cost tuppence.
Draycott children over the age of eleven went to Tutbury School. As soon as the Christmas holidays were over I joined them. We went by school bus, which picked us up outside the 'Roebuck' There were about half-a-dozen of us . We picked a girl up from the 'White Swan' pub, and a crowd of children by the fountain, or well at the top of Draycott village. We went via Hanbury where there were more children waiting, and along the way children joined the bus at various outlying places.
If the cottage seemed like a step back in time , Tutbury School was a giant leap forward. A red brick building up on the hill, it had not been built all that long, for pupils aged eleven to fourteen. There was a science room with Bunson burners, sinks, and other scientific equipment I couldn't identify. There was a sewing room and a domestic science room - usually known as the cookery room - an art room and an assembly hall, in addition to the usual class rooms.
A bell would ring at the end of each lesson and we would change classrooms. Mr Stephenson was the Headmaster, and I remember a Mr Ford and a Mr Jones. I had never been taught by male teachers.
Mr ford was my form master and taught science; Mr Jones taught arithmetic and Mrs Swain taught needlework and knitting although I don't remember producing anything worthwhile in the time that I was there. Mr Stephenson taught music and singing and I was in the school choir, but longed to learn to play the recorder but these had to be bought and I never liked to ask Pat for the money and knew my dad would think it a waste of good money. I remember the recorder group playing Brahms' 'Cradle Song'and the choir learning words to Dvorak's 'Humouresque' for a school concert.
The teaching at Tutbury was far more relaxed than that at Clowne Senior Girls' School There was not the compulsion to learn. I found I was being taught a great deal that I had already learned, and at times I'm ashamed to say I was bored instead of being stimulated. Something I had never experienced at Clowne where the teaching of the basic rules of arithmetic, spelling and Grammar and the use of good English were taught to a very high standard, and history and geography were subjects we all looked forward to learning. We wouldn't have dared, or even wanted, to let our minds wander.
Mr ford touched on the reproductive process, but used fish as an example, telling how the female trout laid her eggs on the bottom of the river bed and then the male trout came along and fertilized them. I'm sure almost every child in that class - except me - knew all about animal, and probably human, reproduction as most of them lived on farms or had friends who did. I hadn't been at 'Hitchett Hill' long enough to witness any of this, and still thought babies came in the midwife's black bag.
There was no cookery at Clowne School so the cookery room at Tutbury was a whole new experience. We had to have a white cookery apron and a cap affair like that worn by waitresses in small cafes. This had to be embroidered with our initials so they didn't get mixed up. As my initials were P.S. and we had a girl in the same class called Pat Storer it rather defeated the object in our case. I think the problem was solved when she used stem stitch and I used chain stitch.
I learned to make thick vegetable soup which had to be sieved. It was cold by the time I got it home in the screw-top jar and Pat said it looked like vomit and no one would eat it, even when it had been heated up. The scones and shortbread, shepherds pie and stew were pronounced delicious when I took them home. I still remember the cookery teacher's adjurement that 'A boiling stew is a spoiling stew.' It must be kept on simmer at all times. I learned to wash, starch and iron my cap and apron, a teatowel and a pillow-case, and to scrub along the grain of the wood when scrubbing a deal table.
Each day of the week two girls from the cookery classes would go to the school canteen kitchen to help the cooks with the dinners. We would help to prepare the vegetables, and were allowed to rub together the fat and the flour for the puddings, after grating the solid margerine on the cheese grater so we could rub it in more quickly. We awaited our turn for canteen duties eagerly, as the cooks would have made some sort of treat for elevenses. No one was supposed to know about this and we were sworn to secrecy. I wonder what the Health and Safety officials would make of this today?
The school gym was housed in the same block as the canteen. I had never seen a gym before, with vaulting horse, bars, pommels etc;. The gym doubled as concert hall and rehearsal room for recorder group and choir. One play we performed in there was about Florence Nightingale, and another was 'The Bluebird'
I remember it was a long hot summer in 1941 and I loved it when the hens hatched their broods of baby chicks. The sound of a hen clucking and 'talking' to her chicks as she scratched the earth for them is to me one of the loveliest sounds of summer, and the euphoric clucking and squawking of a hen telling everyone she has just laid an egg was music to a farmer's wife's ears. Often the egg money was all she had to buy clothes
for herself and the children. I was never very brave about fetching the eggs from the nests in the hen house. There was always a beady-eyed hen still sitting on a nest and I dare not feel under her for the eggs. Hens have cruelly sharp beaks, and their eyes seem to warn 'Just you dare!'
Autumn was a lovely time to be at 'Hitchett Hill'. The fruit trees were laden and blackberries were like bright jewels in the hedgerows. We made blackberry and apple, damson and plum jam. We gathered rose hips to take to school. These were sent off to the factories to make rose hip syrup - full of vitamin C. I think we were paid sixpence a stone - two and a half pence in to-day's money for 14lbs.
As the nights drew in Pat and I would put the boys to bed and settle down to listen to the wireless. She had taught me to knit on four needles and I knitted socks for myself which came up to my knees. These were in grey wool and were held up with garters. I had only ever worn long black stockingd in winter until then.
I remembered we had listened to seven episodes of the serialized version of 'Oliver Twist' and were listening to the last episode and had got to the bit where Bill Sykes is mudering Nancy when the accumulator died on us. Oh what consternation. We went to our beds very disappointed sisters.
During the Christmas holiday I went home to Clowne where the new Clowne Senior Girls' School was now built and up and running. This brand new school had been built on Boughton Lane, and was a grand affair, built as a result of the persistence of our Headteacher, Lavinia Kenning, sister of Sir George who headed what became Kenning Motors. She had agitated for a new school for the senior girls since coming to Clowne as Head Mistress in about 1937.
After a lot of pleading with my parents I was allowed back into the fold in late February and finishe my schooling at this lovely new school.
To the other girls I must have seemed very unimpressed, but this school was almost a replica of the one I had just left; even the system of moving to different rooms for different lessons. The discipline was still as strict, and the teaching just as inspiring. We were fortunate to have such dedicated teachers as Madge Wilde, Lilian Hardy, Mrs Nash, Miss Speakman, Mrs Gosling, Mrs Clarke. They gave us a good foundation to build on.
In July 1942 I left school and one week before my 14th birthday I went to Sheffield 'out service' as a 'Mother's Help'. But that's another story.

The school gym was housed in the same

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