I was born in West Worlington in 1968. These are some of my memories of going to school.
I didn’t like school very much. The teachers we had didn’t live in the village and had to travel by car to get to the school. I used to look forward to bad weather, especially when there was heavy snow, as the teachers couldn’t get to East Worlington and the school was closed.
Every day the milkman brought small bottles of milk to the school for the children to drink at morning playtime. Usually there were a few bottles left over and at the end of the day the teacher would say the first person to put their hand up could have a bottle. If there were more bottles left the teacher would do it again and the person who ‘won’ the bottle previously could not join in.
A highlight of the year was Sports Day which was held in the summer. It was a great event with the school full of parents all supporting their own children. The school arranged all the pupils in different teams. There were four teams, and each team had a different colour, red, blue, green and yellow. I was in the yellow team. There were different events including running, egg and spoon, and sack race. Everyone was given different points depending on where they came in the race and at the end of the day the teacher added up all the points for each team, with the team with the most points winning. Yellow team never won but my brother was in green team, and they won. The winning team was given a cup but only for the year and it had to be handed back for the following year. I didn’t think much about the winners handing back the cup every year, I think they should have been able to keep it.
At playtime we all went outside to play. The playtime equipment we could use included balls, skipping ropes and stilts. Stilts were a real challenge. Some children were very good at skipping and sometimes we tied several roles together to make a long skipping rope, and we tried to get as many children skipping in the rope at the same time as possible until the rope caught somebody’s legs. Sometime the teacher organised playtime games. I liked ‘What time is it Mr Wolf’. When it was cold weather and snow was on the ground we used to make icy slides.
The younger pupils were taught in the temporary classroom, which had been built at the school field side of the schoolhouse, and the older pupils were taught in the larger classroom at the other side of the schoolhouse. There was a kitchen built onto the end of this large classroom. At lunchtime the large classroom, I was in, was turned into a dining hall and all the children had to go out while the tables were rearranged for lunch. At lunchtime we all sat in groups around the tables. I was a Server for my table, which meant when the food was ready, I went to the kitchen and brought the dinner back to my table. I then had to arrange serving it. I remember one meal everyone enjoyed was swede, there was never anything left when swede was on the menu. I also remember the pudding that everyone didn’t like was macaroni. If there was food left on a table, we were allowed to share it and swap it with other tables. At the end of the dinner, we had to tidy up and I had to make sure the pupils on my table tidied up everything. But no one seemed to listen to me and when it was tidying up time, they all ran outside to play.
When I was 11, I went to Chulmleigh School. A bus used to pick us up at Boundy’s Cross and then travel to the school picking up other pupils on the way.
The bus used to bring us home in the evening and one day I missed the bus. I was at the school and had no idea how I was to get home. Luckily for me one of the teachers was also a bus driver and he offered to get me back to Worlington. He wasn’t the driver of the bus I missed but the bus company owned the buses who took us to school was based at the Old Smithy just outside East Worlington village and he had to take the bus he was driving back there when he had finished his run. Anyway, he got me back to Worlington to find my parents really worried wondering where I had got to.
I was really pleased when I didn’t have to go to school anymore.
