Me and the loo seat

Across the road from the primary school was a rather creepy-looking  manor house surrounded by a tall stone wall (think Atkinson Grimshaw) - the main gates were always locked and padlocked; the occupants entering and exiting by the garden door near the church.  It was the nexis of all village ghost stories.

A girl at school - Gwenda- told me that her mother cleaned for Miss W the old lady who owned the manor.   Gwenda had once gone to work with her mother and been so scared that she had had a fit and peed on the sitting room carpet- making her the world expert on Miss W.  Strangely Miss W was at the same time a living being - she could occasionally to be seen in the village with a tartan shopping bag,  but also a supernatural being who haunted any susceptible child..  That this didn't make any sense never occurred to me - I was a trusting (stupid?) child.

 At break times I would beg for tales of Miss W, but by bedtime would be sick with fear and hardly able to sleep.  One day Gwenda told me something that has scarred me for life.  She said it was  a well-known fact that Miss W did her haunting by sitting on any unoccupied lavatory;  the only way to stop her was to close the lid and put something on it (loo roll or some such) so she couldn't get purchase and would go elsewhere.

Every evening when in the bath I was terrified picturing the stick-thin Miss W materialising through the walls to sit on the loo.  Even now when I go into a bathroom I imagine I might see her.  This may be why I favour showers over baths, but if I am in the bath I'll always close the lid and put something on it - just in case.

Me and maypole dancing

I am in my last year at primary school and my  moment of glory is fast approaching.  Annually the school held a May Day festival (yes -  it was a bit like Larkrise to Candleford - this being rural Oxfordshire). The maypole is wheeled out in its milk churn and children from the top class (this being a three-class school) are drilled to dance around, to lovely tunes such as 'Black Nag'  weaving coloured ribbons into patterns.

 But best of all - the oldest girl in the school is always crowned Queen of the May and gets to wear a long dress - usually satin (I just love satin - so nice and slippery - and if not too tight will  hide a multitude of sins - not that this occurred to me aged 10) and on the head she wears a circlet of flowers (I am almost salivating as I write)   The May Queen also has a bouquet of flowers (sadly this would usually include May blossom;  looks nice - but for the uninitiated smells  remarkably like cat pee - to be avoided).  She would be accompanied - no rewrite that - she would be fawned upon by a couple of attendants (think Beyoncé and the other two - see who actually cares what they are called?).  And that year the eldest girl in the school was ME.   There might have been a May King - some poor boy dragged kicking and screaming I expect - but frankly who would be looking at him anyway?  I have no memory of what they wore - and even less interest.
 
But - there is always a but - a few months before the May Day parade a new girl came to school; goodness why she had to - we were all leaving in a few months to go to secondary school - why couldn't she be home schooled until then?  Anyway my arch-rival appears on the scene and her birthday is September 6th (I remember the date to this very day.  Susie Newall  - where are you now?  Did it never cross your mind that without you I could have been a contender?) and mine is in December.

So Susie was May Queen with the lovely (satin - grrh!) dress, flowers, pictures in local newspaper and two sidekicks.  I had my chance to be the Kelly Rowland of May Day, but pride would not allow it so I told everyone I was born to dance and that the maypole was calling me.  The clothes for the dancers were not so good - I had a white shirt, a tangerine-orange skirt with matching hairband made by Mum (not my best colour, but at least she went some way to acknowledging my pain.)

As an aside - the delights of the internet - I'm innocently searching for May Queen and I keep getting this very hairy gentleman - yes, Brian May of Queen - not quite what I had in mind.

Me and how to entertain yourself when bored: part 1

As a child there always seemed to be hours of time to fill and despite busying myself with reading Mallory Towers, playing with Barbie and writing poems I was often bored.  It was about this time that my passion for making things started.   Anyway I'll pass on a few of my childhood craft ideas in case you are suffering from ennui and need inspiration.


Then as now I have little patience for making things that don't give fairly immediate results; French Knitting was a quick win.  You need a wooden cotton reel (haven't seen one of these for a while) for the authentic Renka experience or a commercially-made knitting dolly.  Tap four small nails into the top of the reel, stuff a tail of wool through the hole - I'm getting a bit bored trying to describe this - so for excellent instructions I shall refer you to:  http://www.how-to-knit-guide.com/french-knitting.html.

Eventually a small woollen sausage will appear at the bottom of the cotton reel - if you are very impatient you can pull the tail and stretch the wool.  Keep going until you lose the will to live or you have run out of wool.  I would then sew the said sausage into hats, capes and skirts for my dolls.  Alternatively I'd sew them into circles and give them to Nan -she would (loyally) put them on her dressing table as coasters for flagons of  Oil Of Olay (aka Oil of Ugly ).

Another time-consuming activity was shoe box weaving (no - you are not weaving a shoe box - just read on).  Take the body of a shoe box, on the rims of the short-side cut shallow notches at about 1cm apart.  Knot some wool and thread it through a notch, take it to the far end and thread through the facing notch, wind around the tag (this instruction writing is obviously an art which is beyond me and a little dull) and then take it back up again.  Continue until all notches are full - you now have your warp.  You are now ready for the exciting (everything is relative) part. Take a small ruler and use it to lift up alternative warps and slide under a length of  wool to act as a weft or woof (those Anglo-Saxons really knew how to make a good word in my uttlerly biased opinion). If you vary the wool colours and don't pull it too tight you will produce a tiny magic carpet (or big if you happen to have very large feet) - warning this takes ages and ages.

Me and maths

My brain isn't designed to do maths (or to use DVD players, drive cars, change light bulbs or set up computers i.e. basically anything I can persuade someone else to do as they do it so well...)

I became aware of my mathematical shortcomings when fairly young.  At primary school we had a maths test every Monday morning.  I didn't mind the test itself as it gave me uninterrupted time to think about books or food , but I hated it when we went through the answers.   The headmaster (who taught the top class) would read out the question - something like 'If it takes 20 men 50 years to fill a bath containing 45 gallons with a tooth mug how many months will it take a old man armed with an egg cup' or some such nonsense.  He would then look a round for the child least likely to know and then demand an answer.

I grew wise to this and just before 'answers' I would put up my hand and ask if I could go to the lavatory.  I would then hang around in the lav making origami animals out of paper towels until I heard the lunch bell ringing and then reappear in time for goulash and jam roly-poly.

I probably got away with this for about six months before the HM asked my Mum if there was something wrong with my bowels.

me and the school tuck shop

At primary school during morning break nearly all the children would descend on the tuck shop (there were no more than 90 of us from age five to eleven).  We were allowed to go out of the side door of the school and into the headmaster's garden, through the garden, minding not to step on the plants or his wife would get cross, and then down the lane to the village shop.

The shop, which doubled as a post office,was tiny and we were only allowed in three at a time.  The elderly woman who ran it didn't like time wasters and would start shouting if we took too long deciding (no suggestion of the customer always being right).  I would often start planning my purchases on the way to school or even in bed the night before.  The enticing glass jars I hold responsible for my imperfect gnashers.    My favourites were sherbet dabs - always discard that rather medicinal liquorice stick (they look alarming like leeches) and use the finger,  That way the flavour could be savoured all day and at story time you had the comfort of the wrinkled yellow finger to suck if bored.  Other favourites were flying saucers - sherbet again, rainbow drops, black cat chews and fruit salad chews, Love hearts were good .  Liquorice  shoe laces - red or black - tasted vile, but were useful for garroting people or tying their hand together (we played a lot of kiss-chase at primary school and the boys weren't always compliant so restraints were necessary).

I get religion

My religious mania was encouraged at school - a Church of England primary - if not at home.  The Rector came every Friday, taught RE and then played football with us in his long black dress.  The whole school - all ninety of us - went to church for all the major festivals.  I loved harvest festival, all the food piled up before the altar - this being a farming community there was not a packet of pasta or tin of baked beans to be seen, but great baskets of colourful fruit and vegetables and who could not like bellowing 'We Plough the Fields and Scatter' - bliss.   But Ash Wednesday was probably my favourite because I liked having the cross marked on my forehead - don't ask me why -  I suspect it was just another chance to show off.   By the time we got back to school most of the cross would have worn away so we'd spend all afternoon rubbing pencils on hard surfaces - the desks were ancient and had metal ink wells with brass covers so we could re-anoint ourselves.  If  the pencils had been lead I expect we'd have all been poisoned - not sure if there is such a thing as graphite poisoning.