The Best Days Of Your Life

It’s said that your school days are the best days of ones’ life. Were yours? Think about it.

Mine were very peculiar to start off with, although you never think that way about things until well after they’ve happened!

I loved the village primary school – for an only child there were loads of benefits- other children to make friends with, playground games to get involved with and lots of things to learn. Everything was fun until I came back home saying words that I’d been taught in the playground that I thought were fun but which shocked my parents, neither of whom were narrow minded. I was 6 and on a very slippery slope…..

Ma and Pa decided I had to move school but to where? At just turned 6 and living in a village with limited transport links the first thought was boarding school, but there were two problems; I was too young and my parents couldn’t afford to send me. A few of their friends in the village were also unhappy at their offsprings command of foul language, so all the adults sat down one evening and decided what steps were going to be taken.

In the next village there was a small boys boarding prep school. It catered mainly for the children of parents who worked overseas but wanted to educate their sons in England. It also took a few local day pupils, boys of course and the occasional girl whose parents worked abroad and had placed their son there.

After consultation the school agreed to take 5 extra students – 2 girls and 3 boys. I’m sure that today with all the rules and regulations regarding education this would not have been allowed in any way. The school was in a beautiful Georgian manor house with superb grounds of mature trees with branches cascading to the ground – ideal for dens, grass and flowers. But it had been a family home. We had our classes in the old schoolroom,  boys and girls used the same loos even though there were some girl boarders and there was no distinction between the sexes when it came to sport. Everyone played rugby and cricket in the appropriate seasons. My Pa, an ex-club rugby and cricket player thoroughly approved.

We were taught all the normal stuff but not in the normal manner. Our teacher was a university educated Ethiopian, a beautiful, elegant man whom we were allowed to address as Dr. de Louis. His brain was as big as a planet and he always taught in his academic gown. It turned out that he was a cousin of Heille Selase and because he had another means of address, we kids reckoned that he was a spy! Although he really was a true academic, he made learning fun and interesting and we were allowed or taken into  areas that most kids of our age would never have got to in a normal school timetable. Sometimes we were driven to school but sometimes we all got up early and walked the two miles. In the summer, in the country it was bliss. I think, on reflection, I learned more in that time and still remember it, that in most phases of my schooling.

Nothing lasts forever. The school closed two years later leaving three sets of parents totally unwilling to send their kids back into mainstream education. Luckily there was a very recently retired primary school teacher in an neighbouring village who was willing basically to be a governess to us all. School would take place in the playroom in the house one set of parents. It was big enough for us five.