School Days - memories & outings

Yes Dreamtime, tucking skirts in our knickers, no leggings or jeans for girls then. I was never very athletic so I was not very good at the handstands but I could do a passable crab. Had to tuck the skirt in for 2 ball as well, was it 4 balls thrown with arm under the leg? We lived in an end terrace so we had a bigger entry so we got chucked out when my brother wanted to play football, then they would lose it in the water tank over the top of the toilet and coal house and would have to wait until Mum went out so they could climb out of the bathroom window to retrieve it. The only time the boys in the street would let us play was when they played cowboys and indians and wanted someone to chase.

They were great days when we could play till dusk and we all felt safe out there no matter where we ran to hide. The neighbours must have been very tolerant in my old street, I was always the one who would squeal and often got called in before the others and thought how unfair it was. Anyone out there own a Tardis we could borrow for a day or two just to go back for a little while.

Hi all The start of the school summer holidays often coincided (as it is today) with the start of the Promenade Concerts or the Poms as I always called them. I didn't care for them much then, but I am haunted almost with an aging thought on this. No sooner had the holidays got underway but I started hearing adverts for the last night of the poms. That is it. The holidays are over, as by the Saturday of the last Pom, we were back at school facing the gruel. I wonder what our down-under members will have to say about our "holiday for poms".

The only thing that used to annoy me most about the school summer holidays was that about two days (or so it seemed) after they started all the "Back to School" sales would start in the shops. I really disliked those reminders, in fact I stilll do.

Hi all A light hearted look at the past - memories

And how annoyed my dad used to be if the Coventry Holiday Fortnight coincided with the Birmingham Holiday Fortnight! He would say "The Yos are here", imitating the way they pronounced "you", I'm sure to people from other parts of the country our accents were indistinguishable!

Coventry Holiday Fortnight also coincided with the "peak season premium" charged on chalets at Butlins, over and above the prices stated in their brochure. The choice was either to pay up on arrival at the camp or abandon the holiday and drive all the way home again.

School holidays in the mid 50's, at age 10/11, and living in the middle of Sewall Highway, life was totally idyllic. Complete freedom, virtually no traffic in the street, mostly cyclists on their way to the Morris works. At that stage, we still had fields behind the houses on the opposite side of the road, which seemed to stretch for miles. The ground where we regularly played football and cricket, virtually a large part of every day, was flattened due to such regular use, so was good for our games. We had a bomb crater to play in and explore. At the right time of the year we had corn fields to play in. We had a brook/stream to dam. We had an oak tree, with a very large trunk, but not such a lot of tree, where part of the trunk was hollowed out and we could have fires. We found sheets of corrugated tin, so we could dig dens and have a roof. We had fires, pinched/stole potatoes from home and baked them on our fires. Many evenings on the field nearer to the back of the Devon, and the back of Dartmouth Avenue, there was quite a gathering of older lads, and there would often be, although sort of spontaneous, seemingly well organised game of football. They then all retired to the pub. Later on, when they built Lyng Hall school, we lost our cornfield, instead they gave us hockey nets, perfect for us, now 13/14ish to play football in. We were obviously regularly chased off by the caretaker, we were then faced with what seemed a very high fence, presumably about 4 or 5 feet high to very quickly scale. Interestingly, we did on occasion play football and cricket against Bobby Gould and some of his friends. These matches could be quite vicious with lots of hard tackles. To me the most interesting thing about this was that they had all the kit and we really had nothing. They had proper cricket bats and balls and even had pads. Oh such happy days, could go on for hours. Then after tea it would be games in the street, rin tin tin and the like. By this time there would be a lot of us, sometimes 20 or even 30, boys and girls of quite varied ages. Then there was the scrumping, not sure how I should feel about that now. I do recall that as we got a bit older, we only went to the houses where the trees were close to the house, consequently making it more of a challenge. All I can say is that we never took much and I dread to think of my parents' reaction if we had been caught.

Only holidays we ever had as kids was one to Dawlish and then another year a week in an outhouse at my great-uncle's place in Shrewley. Dad didn't come to Shrewley as it meant he'd not get paid. Ther times it was just day trips out to Warwick, Leamington, or Stratford.

Hi all, Hi pixrobin, I loved Dawlish, & never stayed as a child. Sun, sea & steam trains racing by. Who could ask for anything more? I had to wait until I was adult before I enjoyed times in Dawlish & Teignmouth, by which time, the steam trains had gone into history.

Hi Philip Very good questions you pose there. I could almost write a book in reply! But life's too short for that. I heard from my granddaughter (a primary teacher) that from this coming academic year that the top year of juniors have to be taught binary code: another little morsel that Gove dropped into the curriculum. About as much use to them as a chocolate fireguard. Why don't we teach them how to send smoke signals instead. (Oh, and before someone suggests there should be a question mark at the end of that sentence, it is a rhetorical question not one that requires an answer. ) Most of my education took place after I left school and, at 70, I am still learning. (It makes life more interesting.) I believe we should be teaching things that will be of help to children facing the 21st century, not what we learned to face the 20th. (I'll make a couple of exceptions to that last statement. The first thing we should teach is respect for others - not just respect for the elites' positions in life, but respect for each and everyone as a human being. The other important thing that we should teach is common sense - because that certainly isn't common in today's world.) In many ways I against our present education system because all it is interested in producing is academics, and a Doctor of Philosophy is not much good when you require a plumber.