From a Slate to here

I amused some of my younger acquaintances the other day when I revealed that I learned to write on a slate.  That's right, a slate with a worn wooden surround which had been used by generations of children before me at the little country school at Craigo. The school where I began my education.  The worn wood polished by the hands of others.

Craigo was a village built around a jute mill.  There was no shop, no bus, no church, no pub.  We had to walk a distance to all these amenities. Like every child of the village I had to walk a mile to school.

The mill was notorious for using poor quality jute which had been smouldering in the holds all the way from Bengal to the port of Dundee only to burst into flames when the hatches were opened.  A permanent fire brigade presence at Dundee docks reflected the inflammable nature of jute.

 At Craigo the raw jute which was often soaking from the efforts of the fire brigade was dried in the bleachfields and then spun into yarn for sacks and the backing of linoleum.

Returning to my subject. My first teacher was Miss Ritchie. I still meet her from time to time.  She volunteers in various settings and it is always a pleasure to meet her.  I still think it disrespectful to address her as anything other than "Miss Ritchie".

In fact if I went to school at the age of five (the same age I commenced wage slavery in potato fields) Miss Ritchie was almost certainly a pupil teacher only in her teens.  Only around a dozen or so years would have separated us.  She was a wonderful teacher.

She taught me to read and write and add and subtract and to enjoy singing (she was a great vamper on the Piano, a requirement for any country teacher in those days).  I obviously moved on in my education and eventually picked up a pen and paper.  Nowadays I can scarcely write with a pen at all such is my reliance on a keyboard.  A friend describes my handwriting as "so bad you should have been a Doctor".

Without revealing my age, I can say that I remember free milk at school in the one third of a pint bottles.  They were frozen in winter and unpleasantly warm in summer.

Though never physically punished at primary school, at secondary school this was still an acceptable norm.  The Lochgelly Tawse was the weapon of choice it seemed.   I was belted on my last day at school as I recall (as well as many other days).

I can't remember the offence but do recall considering to tell the belter to get tae fuck.  Instead I decided that this event was simply  the way in which I would remember my secondary schooling,  By that standard I judge it.  It wasn't all bad.  I remember inspirational teachers at Montrose Academy.

The Headmaster in my time was not one of them. He was a man with no great opinion of me.  I can say this with authority. The kind soul who interviewed me for entry to the University of Stirling was so shocked by the content of my academic reference that he showed it ( this supposedly confidential document) to me.  No doubt the Headmaster believed every word.   I hope I have justified his judgement of me as a "a troublemaker" ever since.

Returning to this area in later life (I now live two miles from the house my father was born in and four miles from the house where I spent my formative years)  I wandered into a local bookshop.  There behind the counter was the proprietor.  I recognised the former teacher who had belted me on my last day of school.  I made no reference to it and he clearly did not recognise me.

Time is a great healer of course and I found myself looking with sympathy at a man who was maybe only five years older than myself, probably in his first job, trying to control a bunch of unruly teenagers and being managed by the same Headmaster who wished to damn my academic future.

I'm sure I shall return to these subjects in the future as they spring to my mind.  I'm thinking now about my first experience of the world of work.  Picking potatoes in fields at the age of five.  In the care of my sister who must have been nine!

From a Slate to here.