Patrick Wise's Schooldays - How it all Began ~

I have written elsewhere about how much I hated my schooldays. But as I've grown older and learned more about the world that shaped me, so I have come to learn that it has shaped others too. As a child I had no idea about such matters and so didn't understand. I had come from a loving and free life-style where I met and mixed with the same small cast of characters every day. There were other characters who played regular but lesser roles, the seed salesman, the vet, the baker, the doctor to mention a few. But I still knew them. They were familiar. I would go running off to tell my Dad or Mum when any of them arrived. They would come out from house or shed to meet them and offer them a cup of tea, which was seldom refused. People had time in those days to sit around the kitchen table discussing matters, whatever time of day it was. 

There was always home-made fruitcake on these occasions, and we'd frequently be joined by Percy the Postman, who would lean his bike up against the garden fence and come to offer us pearls of wisdom, and read out loud for us any postcards we were about to receive. 

I knew this world. I knew my place and role in it. I was Dad and Mum's gofer. Stamps from the office for Dad, cake knife and plates for Mum. I had a place and purpose. And seemingly endless freedom.

But then one day I was plunged, with very little warning, into a world of strict restriction where I understood nothing and knew no-one. School hit me like a runaway coal lorry. 

There were what seemed to me like vast crowds of strange children with strange ways. They appeared to understand this strange scary new world. They made a lot of noise. They pushed, pulled and tugged and shouted. And what was worse was that Mum, who had taken me the two miles to school in our old Morris car, told me to stay with a strange woman called Miss Kinchin, who would look after me. Mum then turned and waved briefly, got in the car, and left. She drove away. I was abandoned. I shrank inside. I'd never had to face anything like this before. I had only the vaguest notion of what school was all about. 

Somehow I survived and got used to it, though I never learned to like it. I didn't like being restricted indoors in a room with windows set so high I couldn't see outside apart from a bit of sky. I didn't like being seated behind a desk in rows. They all faced the same way. They faced Miss Kinchin, who sat behind a larger, higher desk, facing us. She kept order with a glare and a twelve inch ruler. 

"Be quiet, Smith! No talking!" Bang on the desk would go the ruler.

In hindsight, Miss Kinchin, was a kindly lady who, with her live-in companion Gerty, made sure I had a drink and a chocolate biscuit after school each day in her house next door. That kept me going until my mother could find the time in the busy farming day to come and fetch me. 

But Miss Kinchin had a job to do and so, I quickly learned, did I. I was there to learn. I was there to learn my 'times' tables and the 'abc'. I did the best I could, despite frequent blinding migraines and a broken leg, but that is another story.