My First School Photograph - Sepia Saturday

"School Days" is the theme of this month's Sepia Saturday prompt photographs,  so I take a look first at my primary school days in Blackpool , Lancashire. 

  I come from a family of teachers (two uncles and an aunt), married a teacher and both my brother, daughter and myself have been trainers in our particularly fields.  So teaching is in the blood somewhere.  My husband taught   physics, and quickly found that to admit to this fact  brought to an end any social conversation.  

  Here is my first school photograph from the 1950's. 

 

I attended primary school  in  Blackpool, Lancashire.  I am on the second front row, second from the right, next to the boy in the  striped pullover.   You can come across 1950s school photos from  across the country, yet the girls  always had  the same look  - hair in plaits,  pudding basin hair cuts, side slides or fancy top ribbons.  Skirts had straps and Peter Pan collars were all the rage. (no idea how they got that name).  Whatever the weather in winter, it was unthinkable for girls to wear trouser, let alone for school -  just not acceptable until some decades much later.  The only concession to the  cold was to wear dark knee length socks instead of white ankle socks.

 

I counted a class of 46  then - more than double today's standard for infants class size!   

 

Playing the triangle in my infant school percussion group  is one of my earliest school memo.ries.  I was not too pleased at being given  this instrument.  Like everyone else, I wanted the favourite choice  - the sleigh bells.

My proudest (and scariest) moment was being chosen to read at the school carol concert held in a nearby church in front of an audience of parents and grandparents.  I had to be provided with a box to stand on in order to reach the lectern and read the few lines typed out for me. 

 

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Moved up into junior school, we sat in serried rows of  battered  individual wooden desks with inkwells,  and I remember chanting our times tables, copying handwriting,  the hated mental arithmetic sessions which I dreaded,  and of course reading which I loved.

Every Wednesday afternoon we gathered in the hall for community singing and I learnt such patriotic songs as The British Grenadiers, Hearts of Oak, The Bonnie Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond, Bluebells of Scotland and my favourite Men of Harlech, sung with much gusto.  Sea shanties were also popular as we swung from side to side to sing What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor?   Are these now all forgotten,  as I doubt that children are familiar with them today? 

 

It was in primary school  around nine years old  that I first wore glasses.  My mother was emphatic that I was not going to wear the hideous national health service wire glasses  with pale pink frames and was prepared to pay for a slightly more flattering pair.   But I always took them off whenever  I had my photograph taken.

 

"Speccy four eyes" was a popular call at my primary school for those of us unfortunate enough to have to wear glasses.   I was a quiet,  shy child, but funnily enough I cannot recall being upset by the taunt - it was just part and parcel of playground culture.  

 

 

There was not a strict uniform at my primary school, but I was desperate to wear a gymslip and tie.   My mother did not like them, but eventually I got one handed down from my cousin and wore  the school red and navy striped tie and the red girdle round my waist, feeling I had stepped out of one of the school stories I loved to read. 

 

 

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Sepia Saturday gives bloggers an opportunity  

to share their family history through photographs.

 

 

                  Click HERE to read more schoolday memories from other bloggers.  

 

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