Opposite Mosman Primary School was a lolly shop. Every so often I would be given some money by the neighbours, specifically to be spent on lollies - I guess because they knew my parents didn't understand about lollies and how
much Australian children loved them. Things like boiled lollies must not have existed in Germany when my parents were growing up and my mother had a horror of the violent colours of the sweets that were available and which I thought absolutely appealing!
The shop was tiny with wide shelves laden with big metal lidded jars that held, so it seemed to me, an Alladin's cave of sweet delights.
The choice was almost endless, I thought. The shop taught us about value for money. A freckle (chocolate disk covered with hundreds and thousands) and which could be eaten in a flash was expensive at a halfpenny. You could get 2 cobbers (chocolate covered caramel) for the same amount. I liked the 'cigarettes', aniseed flavoured sticks with a bit of red at the end to simulate a lighted cigarette, because you could twirl them in your mouth until they came to a point and that took ages.
Rainbow balls, or gobstoppers, were really popular. They cost 1 penny but were really good value because they were big and filled a whole cheek. You'd have to take them out to check regularly because the colours changed so they lasted for ages but you would end up with very sticky fingers. I loved them.
You could get jaffas and plain boiled sweets, fudge, minties, jujubes, bananas, milk bottles, snakes, tiny musk lollies, raspberries, all day suckers, toffee apples which weren't anything to do with apples, just a large round red and green sweet stuck on a stick, bullets, liquorice straps and liquorice all sorts, tubes of many flavours of 'Lifesavers' and my favourite of all, musk sticks. I'm sure there were masses of other sweets I can't even remember.
My mother was horrified when I brought a musk stick home for the first time. Artificial colour, artificial flavour and a surfeit of sugar. She told me I'd get cancer if I ate such stuff. I loved them though and ate plenty over the years, although the appeal was lost ages ago, so if I ever get cancer (please God NO) I'll know the cause!
The lady who owned the shop obviously enjoyed sampling the various treats! She wasn't fat but I don't think she had any teeth. She had a helper in the afternoons when the shop was crowded with multitudes of children all of whom ummed and aahed about spending their cache of coins, mainly pennies.
There was nothing hygienic about the lolly shop. These days it would be closed in a flash. The ladies would just reach into the jars and get out what was requested such as two musk sticks or 4 cobbers and pop them into a little white paper bag. They only had a scoop for the little lollies such as bullets. We didn't mind, just got stuck into the sweet treat as soon as we had squeezed past all the other customers.
We had a canteen at primary school and I was allowed to buy my lunch on a Friday sometimes. I really liked 'savoury mince' on a bread roll which wasn't always available and then I'd have a meat pie instead. I am not good at eating out of paper bags and would invariably spill some of the meat sauce down the front of my tunic. My poor mother was always sponging stains out of my tunic using vinegar (I think) but whenever we got the tunic out of the cupboard after school holidays, there would be a patch of mould growing where I had made a mess during the previous term.
Another item I loved which was available at the canteen was 'straws' - potato crisps cut in skinny little straw shapes. A packet would last the whole of recess as I would nibble each straw individually. I could never understand the girls who would open their mouths and tip a whole packet in! My friends would beg to share and I would grudgingly give them one or two straws. If they were the owner of their own packet, they also would dole out one or two of the salty sticks.
There were a couple of cake shops at Mosman Junction and if I was given the money to buy morning tea, I would buy a cream bun from the shop my mother never frequented. This was a real old fashioned Australian cake shop which sold lamingtons and sponge cakes, cream buns and eclairs, neenish tarts, custard tarts and custard slices with passionfruit icing, finger buns with lurid pink icing as well as cinnamon logs and apple pies.
I loved the mock cream in the cream buns and would sneak a fingerful of cream when the teacher wasn't looking. We had our school cases beside our desks from fourth grade on so it was easy to do. Had I been caught however, I would have been in big trouble.
My school lunches, which came from home, improved over the years thank goodness. My mother started buying more rye or potato bread which was available from the delicatessen at Crows Nest, rather than the dense black bread that I was forced to eat when I was in the Infants School. Mutti made what we called 'meat salad' - diced Berliner sausage, mixed with diced gherkins and mayonnaise, which was delicious, and ham or cheese rather than liverwurst which gets pretty pongy in a warm suitcase. She always gave me fruit and sometimes even cake, so usually I enjoyed my lunch and morning tea as I sat with my friends under the shady trees.
Tuesday 26 February 2013
Friday 22 February 2013
Pocket money
Pocket money was a novel idea to my parents. They didn't believe me when I told them that girls at school were given a sum of money every week 'just because'. They figured they gave me money when I needed something so that was fine, but I persisted and eventually they relented and I was given a regular allowance every Friday. It wasn't much, maybe sixpence to start off with. It was certainly less than what my friends received, but then that money was mine to save and do with what I liked. I was still given extra to spend on various treats. And of course the tooth fairy came fairly regularly. My tooth fairy must have been poorer than others, but she did leave a silver coin, usually a sixpence which was upped to a shilling when I started losing molars.
The neighbours in the flats would often give me the odd coin and I was paid if I minded pets and watered the pot plants when they were away, so I did have some money to put in my money box. Regularly, like Scrooge McDuck,I would get out my money box and count the loot. I had a beautiful wooden money box which had Hansel and Gretel, the wicked witch and the gingerbread house on a base into which the coins and rarely a ten shilling note would go. Underneath was a little metal door which I opened with a tiny key.
I loved making piles of coins - 12 pennies equalled 1 shilling and in those days we still had half pennies, so there was a mountain of them to equal a shilling. I'd have little stacks of threepences and sixpences, shillings and two shilling coins. My parents were very amused about the pennies. The coins that were worth least were larger than the coins worth most - the complete opposite of how coin sizes worked in Europe.
I used the entire amount of money I saved to buy presents for my parents and never thought to buy myself anything, except once, because I would be given a bit of spending money fairly regularly on a Friday to buy a snack and to buy a school lunch. Also sometimes if we were out my parents would buy me a treat such as a 'diamond' ring from Woolworths.
The time I REALLY wanted to buy myself something was when I had been given 10 shillings, probably by the Hummerstons, for minding Yetti the cat and watering their plants while they were on holiday. Mutti and I went into the city by ferry every Saturday when I went to German Saturday school. In one of the souvenir shops at Circular Quay I had seen a koala made of kangaroo fur, and I coveted it. I could visualise cuddling the soft fur. It cost 10 shillings which was so out of my league that I would look at it every week and just dream of owning the treasure. Suddenly I actually had 10 shillings and I knew exactly what I was going to do with that money.
My parents and I would sometimes get the ferry into town and walk around the botanical gardens on a Sunday afternoon. I had my ten shillings and knew what I was going to do with it. Things didn't work out the way I planned though. The shop was shut! My father said how wonderful and grown up it would be if I used my money to buy him and Mutti a cappuccino and myself a milkshake. I really didn't want to but very ungraciously agreed and handed over my money. My parents were really poor at the time and it was a special treat for them. I see that now but at the time I really resented missing out on getting that koala. Years later someone gave me a kangaroo fur covered koala. I didn't like it one little bit!
I loved buying presents for my parents but can't remember much of what I bought apart from some perfume I got for Mutti one year. My shop of choice was Woolworths. I decided to buy perfume. My friend had bought his mother a giant bottle of perfume for two shillings. I found a tiny bottle of 'Apple Blossom' perfume and it cost three shillings. I figured it must be really exclusive because it was so expensive. I wrapped it beautifully and proudly presented the gift. Mutti made a big fuss about what a fabulous present it was and exclaimed about the fragrance and immediately anointed herself. She really did appreciate that gift. I found the bottle many many years later - there was still a bit of liquid in the bottle but it had separated out with globs of oil floating on the surface.
Another present I bought for my parents when I was away on holiday was a little Pyrex bowl which was decorated with yellow polkadots. Again Mutti treasured the gift and I still have the bowl and use it to this day.
I have always loved giving presents and pocket money was an important part of allowing me to do that.
The neighbours in the flats would often give me the odd coin and I was paid if I minded pets and watered the pot plants when they were away, so I did have some money to put in my money box. Regularly, like Scrooge McDuck,I would get out my money box and count the loot. I had a beautiful wooden money box which had Hansel and Gretel, the wicked witch and the gingerbread house on a base into which the coins and rarely a ten shilling note would go. Underneath was a little metal door which I opened with a tiny key.
I loved making piles of coins - 12 pennies equalled 1 shilling and in those days we still had half pennies, so there was a mountain of them to equal a shilling. I'd have little stacks of threepences and sixpences, shillings and two shilling coins. My parents were very amused about the pennies. The coins that were worth least were larger than the coins worth most - the complete opposite of how coin sizes worked in Europe.
I used the entire amount of money I saved to buy presents for my parents and never thought to buy myself anything, except once, because I would be given a bit of spending money fairly regularly on a Friday to buy a snack and to buy a school lunch. Also sometimes if we were out my parents would buy me a treat such as a 'diamond' ring from Woolworths.
The time I REALLY wanted to buy myself something was when I had been given 10 shillings, probably by the Hummerstons, for minding Yetti the cat and watering their plants while they were on holiday. Mutti and I went into the city by ferry every Saturday when I went to German Saturday school. In one of the souvenir shops at Circular Quay I had seen a koala made of kangaroo fur, and I coveted it. I could visualise cuddling the soft fur. It cost 10 shillings which was so out of my league that I would look at it every week and just dream of owning the treasure. Suddenly I actually had 10 shillings and I knew exactly what I was going to do with that money.
My parents and I would sometimes get the ferry into town and walk around the botanical gardens on a Sunday afternoon. I had my ten shillings and knew what I was going to do with it. Things didn't work out the way I planned though. The shop was shut! My father said how wonderful and grown up it would be if I used my money to buy him and Mutti a cappuccino and myself a milkshake. I really didn't want to but very ungraciously agreed and handed over my money. My parents were really poor at the time and it was a special treat for them. I see that now but at the time I really resented missing out on getting that koala. Years later someone gave me a kangaroo fur covered koala. I didn't like it one little bit!
I loved buying presents for my parents but can't remember much of what I bought apart from some perfume I got for Mutti one year. My shop of choice was Woolworths. I decided to buy perfume. My friend had bought his mother a giant bottle of perfume for two shillings. I found a tiny bottle of 'Apple Blossom' perfume and it cost three shillings. I figured it must be really exclusive because it was so expensive. I wrapped it beautifully and proudly presented the gift. Mutti made a big fuss about what a fabulous present it was and exclaimed about the fragrance and immediately anointed herself. She really did appreciate that gift. I found the bottle many many years later - there was still a bit of liquid in the bottle but it had separated out with globs of oil floating on the surface.
Another present I bought for my parents when I was away on holiday was a little Pyrex bowl which was decorated with yellow polkadots. Again Mutti treasured the gift and I still have the bowl and use it to this day.
I have always loved giving presents and pocket money was an important part of allowing me to do that.
Sunday 17 February 2013
Mosman Primary School - Part 3
Mid mornings on Fridays, everyone would gather on the playground for folk dancing. I guess all schools in NSW were doing the same thing at the same time as the folk dancing music and instructions were broadcast and then blasted out over loudspeakers.
Our teachers ran around trying to get some order in the chaos. Pushing and pulling us in clockwise or anticlockwise directions. Things got tricky if there weren't equal numbers of children. As it was a girls only school the taller girls had to be 'boys'.
I can't remember the names of all the dances we learnt apart from the polka. I didn't mind doing the folk dancing classes except when it was blazingly hot in summer.
Another thing we spent a lot of time doing was marching. We would line up in house groups and there would be a a lot of fuss getting everyone in height order - shortest to tallest. The loudspeakers would burst into action, jolly marching music and off we'd go accompanied by shouted instructions 'left, right, left, right. STOP! Everyone, get ready again. LEFT, RIGHT,LEFT, RIGHT'. You'd be concentrating and if you found yourself out of step there would be a funny little shuffly move you could make that would get you going right again.
We would get house points for doing the right thing - looking straight ahead, swinging arms, keeping in step and not laughing when the record got stuck and kept repeating or if it kept jumping.
We practised turning corners when the 'inside' person had to take tiny steps and the 'outside' person took giant strides.The best marching house at sports carnivals got lots of points, so we usually tried really hard. What a waste of time! Unless you intended joining the armed forces where marching seems a good way to show off your uniforms, your numbers and strength, and to make an entertaining spectacle, as a (now) housewife my marching skills have never ever been called upon.
The playground at the primary school was a very different place to the one at the infants school. Although it was still ashfalt and there were lots of scraped knees and elbows because of it, we had shady trees all around the perimeter with bench seats underneath where we would eat our lunch and sit and chat. The main difference was that we were allowed to have skipping ropes or elastics (a favourite game at the time) and as a bonus we'd be allowed to draw on the playground with chalk and play hopscotch.
Apart from those games, girls would bring in other sorts of games and I remember a whole group who was really into dressing up paper dolls. I could never see the fascination - they are probably fashion designers now!
There were various crazes that made the rounds, hula hoops, jacks (knuckle bones), yo yos and the one I really wanted to be part of, but never was, Barbie dolls. My mother thought that Barbies were stupid and not a proper doll. I'll write about dolls at a future date. Another craze was 'jewels'.
Somehow we decided that swapping 'jewels' was just marvellous. I don't even know where we got most of them from - those sparkly gems from junk jewellery. I know I had been given the odd 'diamond' ring from Woolworths or Coles, also Aunty South, from the flats, had a fondness for sparkly costume jewellery and when the stones fell out she gave them to me.
We would sit for ages with our cache of 'jewels' and swap two tiny coloureds for a big 'diamond' - I can't remember exactly how it worked. The practice was banned after some girl in desperation prised a sapphire or ruby out of her mother's ring so that she could swap it for something!!! I don't know if the actual gem was ever found. I think we may have continued a bit of black market trading for a while but as is usual with fads, it faded and something else took its place.
Our teachers ran around trying to get some order in the chaos. Pushing and pulling us in clockwise or anticlockwise directions. Things got tricky if there weren't equal numbers of children. As it was a girls only school the taller girls had to be 'boys'.
I can't remember the names of all the dances we learnt apart from the polka. I didn't mind doing the folk dancing classes except when it was blazingly hot in summer.
Another thing we spent a lot of time doing was marching. We would line up in house groups and there would be a a lot of fuss getting everyone in height order - shortest to tallest. The loudspeakers would burst into action, jolly marching music and off we'd go accompanied by shouted instructions 'left, right, left, right. STOP! Everyone, get ready again. LEFT, RIGHT,LEFT, RIGHT'. You'd be concentrating and if you found yourself out of step there would be a funny little shuffly move you could make that would get you going right again.
We would get house points for doing the right thing - looking straight ahead, swinging arms, keeping in step and not laughing when the record got stuck and kept repeating or if it kept jumping.
We practised turning corners when the 'inside' person had to take tiny steps and the 'outside' person took giant strides.The best marching house at sports carnivals got lots of points, so we usually tried really hard. What a waste of time! Unless you intended joining the armed forces where marching seems a good way to show off your uniforms, your numbers and strength, and to make an entertaining spectacle, as a (now) housewife my marching skills have never ever been called upon.
The playground at the primary school was a very different place to the one at the infants school. Although it was still ashfalt and there were lots of scraped knees and elbows because of it, we had shady trees all around the perimeter with bench seats underneath where we would eat our lunch and sit and chat. The main difference was that we were allowed to have skipping ropes or elastics (a favourite game at the time) and as a bonus we'd be allowed to draw on the playground with chalk and play hopscotch.
Apart from those games, girls would bring in other sorts of games and I remember a whole group who was really into dressing up paper dolls. I could never see the fascination - they are probably fashion designers now!
There were various crazes that made the rounds, hula hoops, jacks (knuckle bones), yo yos and the one I really wanted to be part of, but never was, Barbie dolls. My mother thought that Barbies were stupid and not a proper doll. I'll write about dolls at a future date. Another craze was 'jewels'.
Somehow we decided that swapping 'jewels' was just marvellous. I don't even know where we got most of them from - those sparkly gems from junk jewellery. I know I had been given the odd 'diamond' ring from Woolworths or Coles, also Aunty South, from the flats, had a fondness for sparkly costume jewellery and when the stones fell out she gave them to me.
We would sit for ages with our cache of 'jewels' and swap two tiny coloureds for a big 'diamond' - I can't remember exactly how it worked. The practice was banned after some girl in desperation prised a sapphire or ruby out of her mother's ring so that she could swap it for something!!! I don't know if the actual gem was ever found. I think we may have continued a bit of black market trading for a while but as is usual with fads, it faded and something else took its place.
Thursday 14 February 2013
Mosman Primary School - Part 2
We did a bit of sewing and knitting while we were in the infants school. We were given 'huckaback' cloth which had special loops in the fabric through which you could stitch coloured thread. You could make simple patterns and it was attractive. We made guest towels and our mothers had to hem the finished item. I wonder what happened to my guest towel - I know Mutti kept it for years.
Learning to knit was painful. We were knitting facecloths and were given instructions to buy thick cotton yarn and thick knitting needles so there were only about 20 stitches per row. Mutti got the instructions wrong and bought really fine cotton yarn and skinny needles. This meant I had to have many more stitches on my needles. Oh the agony of being a beginner knitter - dropped stitches, the stitches being so tight it was almost impossible to manipulate. I think Mutti probably redid my day's efforts every night. Anyway, the 'facecloth' was not a success.
When we got to primary school we had sewing classes with a designated sewing teacher called Mrs Hyslop. There was a sewing room and we enjoyed going there. The boys in their separate building had woodwork and metalwork, also with a specialist teacher.
It is a shame that kids these days don't have equivalent lessons. We learnt some real skills such as being able to put up a hem and to sew on buttons - things that you need to know how to do in real life. Of course there were other things we learnt as well.
During our first lesson we were allowed to choose a piece of fabric and some threads - all supplied by the Department of Education. I chose pink fabric and dark blue and brown thread. I have no idea why I chose the brown, it certainly didn't go with the other colours.
Mrs Hyslop drew beautiful diagrams of what we were going to be doing on the board and we would copy them into our sewing book. We made samples which were then glued into the book - running stitches, hemming stitches, blanket stitch and practice buttonholes, just to mention a few.
Mrs Hyslop was there for all my primary school years. Each year the work became more sophisticated. We learnt to do curved seams and made an apron and then a petticoat and matching bloomers. In sixth grade we made a 'throwover' - a large square of organza that you could throw over prepared food to protect it from flies. We learnt to do embroidery called 'shadow stitching' to decorate the item. My embroidery was good but my machine stitching was shocking. How do I remember? I've still got my throwover and have used it often.
Art was my favourite and we never did enough of it as far as I was concerned. We didn't have an art room so desks had to be covered with newspaper, the paint measured out and jars of water, which often got knocked over, placed on the desks. I usually offered to help and washed brushes afterwards as well. It was always a big task, no wonder none of the teachers were thrilled about giving painting lessons.
Because I was good at art, in about sixth grade, I was chosen to do a mural on the wall of the corridor. Probably considered politically incorrect today I vaguely remember that it was an Australian themed painting with lots of aborigines with spears, kangaroos and other native animals. It took quite a while to paint which meant getting out of a whole lot of lessons, so I thought it well worth while!
Learning to knit was painful. We were knitting facecloths and were given instructions to buy thick cotton yarn and thick knitting needles so there were only about 20 stitches per row. Mutti got the instructions wrong and bought really fine cotton yarn and skinny needles. This meant I had to have many more stitches on my needles. Oh the agony of being a beginner knitter - dropped stitches, the stitches being so tight it was almost impossible to manipulate. I think Mutti probably redid my day's efforts every night. Anyway, the 'facecloth' was not a success.
When we got to primary school we had sewing classes with a designated sewing teacher called Mrs Hyslop. There was a sewing room and we enjoyed going there. The boys in their separate building had woodwork and metalwork, also with a specialist teacher.
It is a shame that kids these days don't have equivalent lessons. We learnt some real skills such as being able to put up a hem and to sew on buttons - things that you need to know how to do in real life. Of course there were other things we learnt as well.
During our first lesson we were allowed to choose a piece of fabric and some threads - all supplied by the Department of Education. I chose pink fabric and dark blue and brown thread. I have no idea why I chose the brown, it certainly didn't go with the other colours.
Mrs Hyslop drew beautiful diagrams of what we were going to be doing on the board and we would copy them into our sewing book. We made samples which were then glued into the book - running stitches, hemming stitches, blanket stitch and practice buttonholes, just to mention a few.
Mrs Hyslop was there for all my primary school years. Each year the work became more sophisticated. We learnt to do curved seams and made an apron and then a petticoat and matching bloomers. In sixth grade we made a 'throwover' - a large square of organza that you could throw over prepared food to protect it from flies. We learnt to do embroidery called 'shadow stitching' to decorate the item. My embroidery was good but my machine stitching was shocking. How do I remember? I've still got my throwover and have used it often.
Art was my favourite and we never did enough of it as far as I was concerned. We didn't have an art room so desks had to be covered with newspaper, the paint measured out and jars of water, which often got knocked over, placed on the desks. I usually offered to help and washed brushes afterwards as well. It was always a big task, no wonder none of the teachers were thrilled about giving painting lessons.
Because I was good at art, in about sixth grade, I was chosen to do a mural on the wall of the corridor. Probably considered politically incorrect today I vaguely remember that it was an Australian themed painting with lots of aborigines with spears, kangaroos and other native animals. It took quite a while to paint which meant getting out of a whole lot of lessons, so I thought it well worth while!
Saturday 9 February 2013
Mosman Primary School - Part 1
At the beginning of 1959 I moved to third grade at Mosman Primary School. Unlike Infants School we all had to wear a uniform - white blouse with a blue and white striped tie, navy blue serge box pleated tunic, white socks in summer and black stockings in winter with black shoes. We had a navy blazer and regulation navy raincoat that smelled of perishing rubber after one season. The building was right away from the Infants School and was segregated. The boys were in a completely different building with their own playground and facilities. I think the library was the only shared facility.
I was happy to be away from the boys because they had been such a distraction. They were the ones who were caned nearly every day, they were the ones who desperately needed proper activities in the playground so were 'disruptive' in class (whatever that meant). They missed out on all the physical activity they needed thanks to the stupid headmistress who had banned all toys. Balls and skipping ropes came into the 'toy' category.
I really don't remember much about individual classes in primary school because I was happy and settled, unlike first and second grade with Mrs Strang. There was no caning, that I can remember. Any serious misdemeanours meant a visit to the headmistress. I never found out what happened in that office if you were naughty although there were all sorts of rumours. We were all nervous about having to go to the headmistress's office even if we were just taking her a message.
Just recently my childhood friend John let me know that the terror of caning still went on in the boys' section of the primary school. He had a teacher who had been a prisoner of war in Changi who was terribly cruel and traumatised the more sensitive boys. I had no idea.
A lot of things were quite different from school these days. We spent a lot of time making things look pretty. Margins had to be ruled up - exactly one inch. We practised our writing skills and learnt to do 'running writing'. A great excitement was when for the first time we were given our pens and nibs and taught to write using ink. We had inkwells set in our desks into which we would dip our pens. All sorts of rubbish found its way into the inkwells, mainly blotting paper, broken pen nibs etc. and cleaning them out at the end of term was an unpleasant job which the 'ink monitors' had to do. I was an 'ink monitor' several times. The ink came as a powder and had to be mixed with water before being poured into every inkwell on a Monday morning. My thumb, first and second fingers on my right hand were stained blue for several years, until biros became readily available and approved by the school when I was in about fifth grade. I had long plaits for a while at primary school and the ends were also blue thanks to the girl who sat behind me and dipped my hair into her inkwell.
At the beginning of the year a whole stack of exercise books was handed out which we would have to take home and cover with paper. The books with orange covers had lines spaced for writing and we used them for spelling, compositions and grammar exercises etc. The green covered books were botany books which had a lined page followed by a blank page which we used for social studies and geometry and the red covers indicated maths books. The paper we used wasn't specified, so birthday wrap or brown paper was usually used. We were encouraged to make the books look pretty so we would stick a picture on the front, usually cut out from a birthday card. One year my father brought home some green waxy paper which we used to cover my books. It turned out to be fairly waterproof so ink spilled on the cover could just be wiped off which kept the books looking nice and tidy until they had been used up.
My father would help cover my books and he showed me how to make neat corners so that the paper wouldn't come loose. It was lovely taking a whole stack of newly covered books back to school and stowing them in the shelf under my desk. As the term progressed the books became more and more shabby and by the end of term when we had to empty our desks you would find all sorts of rubbish had migrated into the back of the shelf, crumpled paper, mangled blotting paper, old blunt pencils, a squashed exercise book that I was sure had been lost somewhere and so on.
I was lucky. Somehow I had inherited my father's artistic skill and was really good at writing with a pen and sloping my work so I didn't even need the 'slope sheets'. These were heavily printed sheets of sloped lines which were slipped behind the page you were working on and they fitted a page exactly. You could see the lines through the page of your exercise book and they were supposed to encourage your writing to slope to the right. Left handers had an especially difficult time sloping their work the 'correct' way and would end up making lots of blots with their ink as they struggled with their nibs which scritched and scratched their way across the page. Girls who couldn't write neatly had a hard time - teachers would rip pages out and order the work to be done again. I was always praised for my writing, would get 10/10 and would feel smug. These days you need to be able to write but it is the content of the writing that is valued more. Fair enough too!
Another joy at primary school was the school magazine which was issued monthly. It was a proper publication given out by the Department of Education. We had to buy our own 'magazine cover', which was a folder made from heavy cardboard and had string lines inside through which you would feed your own magazine. By the end of the year there would be about ten very dogeared magazines in the folder. There were articles of interest, poems, crosswords, other puzzles and a serial in the magazine. When they was handed out we would be allowed to sit and read quietly. I always dived for the serial which was my favourite bit of the magazine. For some reason I remember the title of one mild adventure story 'Antony Ant on Earwig Island' - I have no idea why I liked it so much and can't remember anything about it apart from the fact that I once won a prize for drawing the aforementioned Antony Ant. We worked on each of the magazines for a month, learning the poems off by heart, reading parts aloud, parsing various sections and doing the crosswords which I was particularly bad at. It must have been a wonderful resource for the teachers. We were thoroughly sick of the magazine by the end of the month and would eagerly look forward to the next edition.
I was happy to be away from the boys because they had been such a distraction. They were the ones who were caned nearly every day, they were the ones who desperately needed proper activities in the playground so were 'disruptive' in class (whatever that meant). They missed out on all the physical activity they needed thanks to the stupid headmistress who had banned all toys. Balls and skipping ropes came into the 'toy' category.
I really don't remember much about individual classes in primary school because I was happy and settled, unlike first and second grade with Mrs Strang. There was no caning, that I can remember. Any serious misdemeanours meant a visit to the headmistress. I never found out what happened in that office if you were naughty although there were all sorts of rumours. We were all nervous about having to go to the headmistress's office even if we were just taking her a message.
Just recently my childhood friend John let me know that the terror of caning still went on in the boys' section of the primary school. He had a teacher who had been a prisoner of war in Changi who was terribly cruel and traumatised the more sensitive boys. I had no idea.
A lot of things were quite different from school these days. We spent a lot of time making things look pretty. Margins had to be ruled up - exactly one inch. We practised our writing skills and learnt to do 'running writing'. A great excitement was when for the first time we were given our pens and nibs and taught to write using ink. We had inkwells set in our desks into which we would dip our pens. All sorts of rubbish found its way into the inkwells, mainly blotting paper, broken pen nibs etc. and cleaning them out at the end of term was an unpleasant job which the 'ink monitors' had to do. I was an 'ink monitor' several times. The ink came as a powder and had to be mixed with water before being poured into every inkwell on a Monday morning. My thumb, first and second fingers on my right hand were stained blue for several years, until biros became readily available and approved by the school when I was in about fifth grade. I had long plaits for a while at primary school and the ends were also blue thanks to the girl who sat behind me and dipped my hair into her inkwell.
At the beginning of the year a whole stack of exercise books was handed out which we would have to take home and cover with paper. The books with orange covers had lines spaced for writing and we used them for spelling, compositions and grammar exercises etc. The green covered books were botany books which had a lined page followed by a blank page which we used for social studies and geometry and the red covers indicated maths books. The paper we used wasn't specified, so birthday wrap or brown paper was usually used. We were encouraged to make the books look pretty so we would stick a picture on the front, usually cut out from a birthday card. One year my father brought home some green waxy paper which we used to cover my books. It turned out to be fairly waterproof so ink spilled on the cover could just be wiped off which kept the books looking nice and tidy until they had been used up.
My father would help cover my books and he showed me how to make neat corners so that the paper wouldn't come loose. It was lovely taking a whole stack of newly covered books back to school and stowing them in the shelf under my desk. As the term progressed the books became more and more shabby and by the end of term when we had to empty our desks you would find all sorts of rubbish had migrated into the back of the shelf, crumpled paper, mangled blotting paper, old blunt pencils, a squashed exercise book that I was sure had been lost somewhere and so on.
I was lucky. Somehow I had inherited my father's artistic skill and was really good at writing with a pen and sloping my work so I didn't even need the 'slope sheets'. These were heavily printed sheets of sloped lines which were slipped behind the page you were working on and they fitted a page exactly. You could see the lines through the page of your exercise book and they were supposed to encourage your writing to slope to the right. Left handers had an especially difficult time sloping their work the 'correct' way and would end up making lots of blots with their ink as they struggled with their nibs which scritched and scratched their way across the page. Girls who couldn't write neatly had a hard time - teachers would rip pages out and order the work to be done again. I was always praised for my writing, would get 10/10 and would feel smug. These days you need to be able to write but it is the content of the writing that is valued more. Fair enough too!
Another joy at primary school was the school magazine which was issued monthly. It was a proper publication given out by the Department of Education. We had to buy our own 'magazine cover', which was a folder made from heavy cardboard and had string lines inside through which you would feed your own magazine. By the end of the year there would be about ten very dogeared magazines in the folder. There were articles of interest, poems, crosswords, other puzzles and a serial in the magazine. When they was handed out we would be allowed to sit and read quietly. I always dived for the serial which was my favourite bit of the magazine. For some reason I remember the title of one mild adventure story 'Antony Ant on Earwig Island' - I have no idea why I liked it so much and can't remember anything about it apart from the fact that I once won a prize for drawing the aforementioned Antony Ant. We worked on each of the magazines for a month, learning the poems off by heart, reading parts aloud, parsing various sections and doing the crosswords which I was particularly bad at. It must have been a wonderful resource for the teachers. We were thoroughly sick of the magazine by the end of the month and would eagerly look forward to the next edition.
Sunday 3 February 2013
Mosman Infants School - the playground.
The playground at the Infants school was asphalt and had a thick white line painted down the middle. Girls played on one side and boys on the other - woe betide anyone crossing the line and being in the wrong part of the playground.
We sat outside on wooden benches that were by the wall to eat our lunches. I remember one teacher telling us how to eat our sandwiches - "You hold the sandwich by the soft white part in the middle and take a bite of the crust. Now, chew, chew, chew. Take another bite.......now we get to the lovely soft middle. Chew, chew, chew...." I was completely confused. My sandwiches didn't have soft white middles to aim for. My mother bought stodgy black bread which swelled in my mouth until I could hardly swallow it. I could never keep up with the "chew, chew, chew" and would have sat there all lunchtime had I eaten all the sandwiches my mother made. Eventually I would put the uneaten portions back in the paper bag and take them back home where I would get into trouble for not eating my lunch. Those uneaten portions would turn up as my lunch the next day. It was because of the horrible lunches that I told my first lie. I threw the uneaten portions away and when questioned said that I had eaten everything! I really, really didn't like my sandwiches and looked with envy at the jam, honey, peanut butter or Vegemite sandwiches of my friends, dreaming that one day I too could have something so delicious. Mutti always put fruit in my lunch bag and I did enjoy that.
After eating our lunches we would put rubbish in the bins and then be allowed to play. We had a crazy headmistress who didn't allow us to bring toys to school. If a toy was discovered, she would confiscate it and it would stay in her drawer until the end of term so we had to invent toyless games. Girls are fairly good at that sort of thing, clapping or skipping games, 'oranges and lemons' and 'what's the time Mr Wolf' were the order of the day. Also we didn't mind just sitting and talking, but the boys would go mad with frustration and run about like crazy and get into fights. I can remember my dear friend John being set upon by the school bully, Warren C. I saw this happening and stood on the white line crying, calling out my support but being too scared to go into the boys' side of the playground to help.
There was a toilet block set at the back of the playground and it was a dreadful place. Of course I never saw the boys' toilets but there were only about 5 toilets for the girls to use, the sixth toilet was for the teachers. The toilets were flushed by pulling a chain that was attached to the cisterns set high on the wall. We children weren't allowed to pull the chain, perhaps someone had pulled a cistern down once, I don't know, but the place stank to high heaven. We had large classes and lots of children so there was always a long queue for the toilets. We also didn't have toilet paper! If you had to do 'number twos' you would have to ask the teacher for some toilet paper. The teacher would ask how many sheets you needed. I thought it so humiliating that I never ever did that at school.
Once I went to the toilet and there was a poo floating in there. I could hardly manage a drip after that and then the girl who went after me, a big girl in 2nd grade, found me in the playground afterwards and pinched me hard for being disgusting. I denied that I had made the contribution but she said she knew I had because she was older than me and was going to be in third grade next year. I was in awe of such a grown up person but was frightened of her and was always looking out for her so that I could run away.
The whole toilet situation was so horrible that I would try not to drink anything so I didn't need to go. I'd hold on all day and rush home, often having to pee in the bushes near Clitheroe. I have never been good at squatting and peeing so would usually manage to wet my socks and then I'd be in trouble from my mother. I just couldn't win!
When I think about it now I also feel sorry for the teachers who had to flush the toilets at the end of recess and lunch.
Thanks to the asphalt and the uneven surface due to tree roots around the edge of the playground near the kindergarten area, kids were always falling over and skinning knees and elbows. I always had scars or band aids taking turns on my arms and legs.
The playground at the Infants school was awful and I was very happy when I finished second grade and was able to move to primary school after the Christmas holidays.
We sat outside on wooden benches that were by the wall to eat our lunches. I remember one teacher telling us how to eat our sandwiches - "You hold the sandwich by the soft white part in the middle and take a bite of the crust. Now, chew, chew, chew. Take another bite.......now we get to the lovely soft middle. Chew, chew, chew...." I was completely confused. My sandwiches didn't have soft white middles to aim for. My mother bought stodgy black bread which swelled in my mouth until I could hardly swallow it. I could never keep up with the "chew, chew, chew" and would have sat there all lunchtime had I eaten all the sandwiches my mother made. Eventually I would put the uneaten portions back in the paper bag and take them back home where I would get into trouble for not eating my lunch. Those uneaten portions would turn up as my lunch the next day. It was because of the horrible lunches that I told my first lie. I threw the uneaten portions away and when questioned said that I had eaten everything! I really, really didn't like my sandwiches and looked with envy at the jam, honey, peanut butter or Vegemite sandwiches of my friends, dreaming that one day I too could have something so delicious. Mutti always put fruit in my lunch bag and I did enjoy that.
After eating our lunches we would put rubbish in the bins and then be allowed to play. We had a crazy headmistress who didn't allow us to bring toys to school. If a toy was discovered, she would confiscate it and it would stay in her drawer until the end of term so we had to invent toyless games. Girls are fairly good at that sort of thing, clapping or skipping games, 'oranges and lemons' and 'what's the time Mr Wolf' were the order of the day. Also we didn't mind just sitting and talking, but the boys would go mad with frustration and run about like crazy and get into fights. I can remember my dear friend John being set upon by the school bully, Warren C. I saw this happening and stood on the white line crying, calling out my support but being too scared to go into the boys' side of the playground to help.
There was a toilet block set at the back of the playground and it was a dreadful place. Of course I never saw the boys' toilets but there were only about 5 toilets for the girls to use, the sixth toilet was for the teachers. The toilets were flushed by pulling a chain that was attached to the cisterns set high on the wall. We children weren't allowed to pull the chain, perhaps someone had pulled a cistern down once, I don't know, but the place stank to high heaven. We had large classes and lots of children so there was always a long queue for the toilets. We also didn't have toilet paper! If you had to do 'number twos' you would have to ask the teacher for some toilet paper. The teacher would ask how many sheets you needed. I thought it so humiliating that I never ever did that at school.
Once I went to the toilet and there was a poo floating in there. I could hardly manage a drip after that and then the girl who went after me, a big girl in 2nd grade, found me in the playground afterwards and pinched me hard for being disgusting. I denied that I had made the contribution but she said she knew I had because she was older than me and was going to be in third grade next year. I was in awe of such a grown up person but was frightened of her and was always looking out for her so that I could run away.
The whole toilet situation was so horrible that I would try not to drink anything so I didn't need to go. I'd hold on all day and rush home, often having to pee in the bushes near Clitheroe. I have never been good at squatting and peeing so would usually manage to wet my socks and then I'd be in trouble from my mother. I just couldn't win!
When I think about it now I also feel sorry for the teachers who had to flush the toilets at the end of recess and lunch.
Thanks to the asphalt and the uneven surface due to tree roots around the edge of the playground near the kindergarten area, kids were always falling over and skinning knees and elbows. I always had scars or band aids taking turns on my arms and legs.
The playground at the Infants school was awful and I was very happy when I finished second grade and was able to move to primary school after the Christmas holidays.
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