The last few weeks have taken my breath away, perhaps I should continue to hold my breath, but it’s a bit like drowning.
They say, that when someone is going down for the third time, his life flashes past him.
This could be true, it’s now past one o’clock, and here I am, back in 1942.
I hate school, I’d rather be up St Annes Hill.
Eastworth Road, is so blooming long, kids are running past me, jumping up to see the time on the clock over the Convent fence.
I know it’s already too late, I’ve just heard the bell! but, I too, give a little jump to see the time, yes the big hand is still not quite at the top.
On my side of the road, a lovely horse is standing next to the hedge, I give him a couple of strokes, plenty of time yet.
I think he belongs to the house opposite the Convent, where a poor boy has something called St Vitus Dance, he can’t stop fidgeting.
I had better slow down a bit, and pick some of the lovely, fresh Hawthorn leaves in the hedge of the Handicrafts School.
There is something I have never been able to fathom, we call the leaves ‘bread and cheese’, and we eat them as if they are sweets!!
Actually, they are nice to eat, a sort of comfort food, before I meet Miss Slaughter.
There she will be, standing at the gate, swishing her skinny cane, another two on each hand I expect.
She does this for our own good, she says, but I think she rather likes to see a few tardy children running down Freeprae Road—or in my case strolling.
I meet Johnny Jones, he’s strolling too, he lives right next the school, in the Fairground, I think he hates school too.
They say, Corporal punishment is a way of making a child do as they are told, like doing things at the right time, getting to school early, and such like.
It never did me any good, here I am, 77 years later, and it’s nearly two o’clock, I should be asleep by now.
Madeinchertsey 