Sunday, 27 September 2015
Primary 7
In primary 5 at the New School, we spent a lot of time pondering our future. Not what we aspired to in the way of careers and so on but more on who would be our next teacher. Would it be Mrs Gawlick or Miss Hunter.
Primary 6 were Mrs Gawlick's current class so surely their reins would be passed on to Miss Hunter and we would have a year to prepare ourselves for the ultimate test for young pupils.
In the meantime, we continued as normal with our daily games and so on. We were inveterate collectors of anything and everything. Stamps. coins (though they didn't really last long enough in our pockets to be classified as collectables!), pebbles, comics and so on.
A particular favourite were cards from packets of tea. I can't remember if it was PG Tips or Typhoo who had marvellous cards with exotic animals but all of us tried to collect the whole set. I was at a disadvantage here as we drank Coop tea in our family. How come parents could never understand the stress they put young collectors through by not buying the tea they preferred!
Another type of collectable card was the bubblegum card. The gum tasted foul but the cards were great. The best series had to be 'Mars Attacks'. This was a bloodthirsty story with gory drawings of both humankind and the martian invaders being ray-gunned or blown to pieces. Great stuff for us boys. Pictures of the cards can be found on the internet for those of you who miss this type of nostalgia.
Collecting things was one thing but the real fun was in swapping. When you were short of one item to make a set complete, you might be prepared to mortgage your dinner money for a week or sell your sister (if you had one).
Comics were something else. We boys had a fantastic selection. For the really young were the Beano, Dandy, Topper and Beezer. They featured famous characters such as the cowpie-eating Desperate Dan, the Bash Street Kids, Corky the Cat, Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx and so on.
The girls had Bunty and Jackie.......nuff said.
For the little bit older reader were comics such as the Hotspur, Wizard, Eagle, Victor and Hornet, among others. They often featured war stories with brave british servicemen taking on the Third Reich or the Japanese Empire single-handed.......and winning. One edition of the Victor even showed how to make a molotov cocktail! Of course this had to be tested, unsuccessfully at first due to using heating paraffin, then an explosive success when petrol was substituted for the aforesaid paraffin in cider flagons.
Then came the music mags. We had to be the luckiest generation ever when talking about music. Already immersed in the sounds of rock and roll from artists such as Elvis, Cliff Richard, Buddy Holly, Johnny and the Hurricanes, Billy Fury and the like, we were ready to receive the up and coming sounds of the new music....Pop.
We bought magazines such as Fabulous to read about all the latest bands and our new pop heroes like the Beatles, the Stones, Wayne Fontana, Billy J. Kramer, the Merseybeats. the Fourmost, Cilla Black, Sandie Shaw, Manfred Mann, Dave Clark Five and so on and so on. The list was endless.
At school one fell into one of two camps; the Beatles or the Stones. I was a Stones man therefore could never admit to how much I liked the Beatles. Such was life at Dunblane Primary.
When we reached primary 6 we were allowed to produce our own show and appeared on stage in the assembly hall in front of the whole school. Four of us mimed to the Beatles' hits 'She loves you' and 'Twist and Shout.' Being the only one who knew all the words to both songs, I played the role of Paul McCartney for the first and John Lennon for the second, complete with plastic Beatles wig bought in Woolies for a shilling or thereabouts.
For those younger, pre-decimal readers, a shilling was the equivalent of 5 pence today although then it was 12 pennies. A pound consisted of: 960 farthings or 480 halfpennies or 240 pennies or 80 threepennies or 40 sixpences or 20 shillings or 10 two shllings (florins) or 8 halfcrowns (2/6) or 4 crowns (a legal tender coin but one which was minted mainly as a commemorative piece for coronations and the like.) We also had a 10 shilling note.
As if the monetary system was not baffling enough, all weights and measures were calculated differently from the decimal system. We had ounces and furlongs, gallons and hundredweights, yards and pints. You had to be on your toes with arithmetic in those days and the invention of pocket calculators was way over the horizon!
Primary 6................ we had learned our fate. Our teacher would be Miss Hunter and not only for the one year but we would also have her in Primary 7!
I remember her as a tall, thin woman: everyone's nightmare of the stern, spinster schoolteacher who hated children. I am probably doing her a great disservice because we really learned our stuff in those two years but children's memories know no forgiveness.
Lessons were hammered into us and I mean almost literally. Mistakes were punished by the belt and often we knew the answers to questions but our fear of her made us so nervous that we stammered out the wrong answer and were rewarded by four or six strokes of the belt.
She would pick out two pupils for mental arithmetic who would stand out by the blackboard terrified of answering incorrectly. Contestants in a final of Mastermind have it easy compared with the stress we experienced.
Even worse were the spelling competitions. Again, two would be chosen to stand in front of the class and be bombarded with words to spell. That in itself was not bad, we were pretty good at spelling, but there was always one word which would appear in every session, and woe betide you if you got it wrong. The longer it went on without the WORD the more we sweated and the more nervous we became. I remember spelling circus 's-i-r-c-u-s' because the tension was almost unbearable. Then it happened 'Spell Mississippi', she would say. Tongue tied, the unfortunate victim would miss out an s or an i and so the dreaded belt would come forth to do its mistress's bidding.
Many years later, I returned to live in Dunblane again and was enjoying a pint in the Dunblane Hotel. A man at the bar asked me where I was from and I replied 'Dunblane'.
'What school did you go to?', he asked.
'The Braeport.', I answered.
' Naw,' he continued, ' So you're a proper 'Dunblanonian'. Who was your teacher?'
'Miss Hunter.' I responded.
We looked at each other, smiled and, simultaneously cried out, letter for letter ' M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I !'
Not to be outdone, an older man at the bar exclaimed, 'Good God, you two have been taught by Miss Hunter as well!'
I think we were three generations of Miss Hunter's pupils in the bar that evening!
The Belt
Primary 6 were Mrs Gawlick's current class so surely their reins would be passed on to Miss Hunter and we would have a year to prepare ourselves for the ultimate test for young pupils.
In the meantime, we continued as normal with our daily games and so on. We were inveterate collectors of anything and everything. Stamps. coins (though they didn't really last long enough in our pockets to be classified as collectables!), pebbles, comics and so on.
A particular favourite were cards from packets of tea. I can't remember if it was PG Tips or Typhoo who had marvellous cards with exotic animals but all of us tried to collect the whole set. I was at a disadvantage here as we drank Coop tea in our family. How come parents could never understand the stress they put young collectors through by not buying the tea they preferred!
Another type of collectable card was the bubblegum card. The gum tasted foul but the cards were great. The best series had to be 'Mars Attacks'. This was a bloodthirsty story with gory drawings of both humankind and the martian invaders being ray-gunned or blown to pieces. Great stuff for us boys. Pictures of the cards can be found on the internet for those of you who miss this type of nostalgia.
Collecting things was one thing but the real fun was in swapping. When you were short of one item to make a set complete, you might be prepared to mortgage your dinner money for a week or sell your sister (if you had one).
 |
| Me: back row middle |
Comics were something else. We boys had a fantastic selection. For the really young were the Beano, Dandy, Topper and Beezer. They featured famous characters such as the cowpie-eating Desperate Dan, the Bash Street Kids, Corky the Cat, Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx and so on.
The girls had Bunty and Jackie.......nuff said.
For the little bit older reader were comics such as the Hotspur, Wizard, Eagle, Victor and Hornet, among others. They often featured war stories with brave british servicemen taking on the Third Reich or the Japanese Empire single-handed.......and winning. One edition of the Victor even showed how to make a molotov cocktail! Of course this had to be tested, unsuccessfully at first due to using heating paraffin, then an explosive success when petrol was substituted for the aforesaid paraffin in cider flagons.
Then came the music mags. We had to be the luckiest generation ever when talking about music. Already immersed in the sounds of rock and roll from artists such as Elvis, Cliff Richard, Buddy Holly, Johnny and the Hurricanes, Billy Fury and the like, we were ready to receive the up and coming sounds of the new music....Pop.
We bought magazines such as Fabulous to read about all the latest bands and our new pop heroes like the Beatles, the Stones, Wayne Fontana, Billy J. Kramer, the Merseybeats. the Fourmost, Cilla Black, Sandie Shaw, Manfred Mann, Dave Clark Five and so on and so on. The list was endless.
At school one fell into one of two camps; the Beatles or the Stones. I was a Stones man therefore could never admit to how much I liked the Beatles. Such was life at Dunblane Primary.
When we reached primary 6 we were allowed to produce our own show and appeared on stage in the assembly hall in front of the whole school. Four of us mimed to the Beatles' hits 'She loves you' and 'Twist and Shout.' Being the only one who knew all the words to both songs, I played the role of Paul McCartney for the first and John Lennon for the second, complete with plastic Beatles wig bought in Woolies for a shilling or thereabouts.
For those younger, pre-decimal readers, a shilling was the equivalent of 5 pence today although then it was 12 pennies. A pound consisted of: 960 farthings or 480 halfpennies or 240 pennies or 80 threepennies or 40 sixpences or 20 shillings or 10 two shllings (florins) or 8 halfcrowns (2/6) or 4 crowns (a legal tender coin but one which was minted mainly as a commemorative piece for coronations and the like.) We also had a 10 shilling note.
As if the monetary system was not baffling enough, all weights and measures were calculated differently from the decimal system. We had ounces and furlongs, gallons and hundredweights, yards and pints. You had to be on your toes with arithmetic in those days and the invention of pocket calculators was way over the horizon!
Primary 6................ we had learned our fate. Our teacher would be Miss Hunter and not only for the one year but we would also have her in Primary 7!
I remember her as a tall, thin woman: everyone's nightmare of the stern, spinster schoolteacher who hated children. I am probably doing her a great disservice because we really learned our stuff in those two years but children's memories know no forgiveness.
Lessons were hammered into us and I mean almost literally. Mistakes were punished by the belt and often we knew the answers to questions but our fear of her made us so nervous that we stammered out the wrong answer and were rewarded by four or six strokes of the belt.
She would pick out two pupils for mental arithmetic who would stand out by the blackboard terrified of answering incorrectly. Contestants in a final of Mastermind have it easy compared with the stress we experienced.
Even worse were the spelling competitions. Again, two would be chosen to stand in front of the class and be bombarded with words to spell. That in itself was not bad, we were pretty good at spelling, but there was always one word which would appear in every session, and woe betide you if you got it wrong. The longer it went on without the WORD the more we sweated and the more nervous we became. I remember spelling circus 's-i-r-c-u-s' because the tension was almost unbearable. Then it happened 'Spell Mississippi', she would say. Tongue tied, the unfortunate victim would miss out an s or an i and so the dreaded belt would come forth to do its mistress's bidding.
Many years later, I returned to live in Dunblane again and was enjoying a pint in the Dunblane Hotel. A man at the bar asked me where I was from and I replied 'Dunblane'.
'What school did you go to?', he asked.
'The Braeport.', I answered.
' Naw,' he continued, ' So you're a proper 'Dunblanonian'. Who was your teacher?'
'Miss Hunter.' I responded.
We looked at each other, smiled and, simultaneously cried out, letter for letter ' M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I !'
Not to be outdone, an older man at the bar exclaimed, 'Good God, you two have been taught by Miss Hunter as well!'
I think we were three generations of Miss Hunter's pupils in the bar that evening!
The Belt
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