School of Rock.

Went to the South London Gallery, in Peckham, the other day, it was for the screening of a really good short film about mental health and maybe I’ll tell you more about that another time.

A colleague and I went out into the small courtyard at the back after the showing just to get some fresh air and look at the building, and as we were looking up at the big windows and brick work we both commented on how it reminded us of our respective schools. It was so evocative that it triggered a host of recollections during the train ride home.

The infants and junior school I went to no longer exists, (well the name lives on in another building that used to be a secondary school) it was torn down years ago and they built a residential home on the site.

The infants school was fairly modern, a separate single storey building clearly built to augment the old building that housed the juniors. It had a communal playground for boys and girls and the separate dining building was in its grounds. Once advanced to the junior school you ventured once a day down the steps into the infant playground for your school dinners.

The junior school was a massive cold building with outside toilets. There was a playground for the boys and one for the girls where we met early in the morning, our mothers or aunts or grandmothers would bring us to the respective entrances and in we would go. In those days it was very rare to see the dad’s at the school gate and a special treat and real kudos if your dad collected you from school. Adults did not enter the playground or the school, the horror if a parent went in to the school that meant very serious trouble. Mostly you would take in a note from your parents if anything needed communicating.

Once in the playground there would be much running around, especially in the winter when bare knees were chapped and raw, in order to try and keep warm.

When the whistle was blown we would all line up in our class lines and file into the back entrance of the school to the cloakroom, rows and rows of pegs for our coats, with wire shoe racks underneath, the boys side of the school was a mirror image. Once de-cloaked we would file along the cold echoing hallways, or up the steep stone staircases, to the classrooms, where we would be reunited with the boys. The rooms had huge high ceilings and big high windows that we could not see out of, so no chance of distraction there, and big old desks with a hole for the china inkpot. We had permanently blue fingers from the ink and lots of drips and blotches on our paper! However hard, they were good times and it is a real shame that the building didn’t survive, it was the sort of place they would make into luxury flats these days.

One last thought, I still don’t get why it was fine for us to play with and share a playground with the boys from 4ish to 7 years, but to have to be segregated from 7 to 11 years and then OK to be back with them from 11 years onwards at secondary school!