I had so much on my mind at ten years old. I didn’t have many friends but I did have a little book that I would scribble my thoughts into. I was looking back in my diary and remember one passage about changing schools. I wrote in my diary that I would be leaving Longwood junior School to go to Hartford Senior School.
I hated leaving Longwood Junior School, I had finally settled in and knew everyone by name. I wasn’t at all ready to leave. I remember the day when I turned up at Hartford Senior School. It was a very bright Monday morning. All of the new children, including myself were put into a class to do a test. Mrs. Mercury the head teacher said very loud and clear that the test was to see who was stupid and who was clever. The test would say who would be placed where in the school.
After the test I got up and followed my friend outside and Mrs. Mercury shouted, “Hey you, meaning me, don’t you go outside with her!” “Don’t go outside with her as you are stupid and she is clever!” “You haven’t got any of the answers right!”
From that moment forward I decided that I didn’t like being at school anymore. It was too much for me to take. Being caned was becoming more and more difficult as I had grown taller then Mrs. Mercury. I even know that I was so unhappy that I couldn’t learn. Things were getting worse as I had not had a letter from my Mother in England in a very long time and my grandfathers behaviour was getting even more bizarre.
I walked out of school one afternoon and saw a police land rover outside the school gate. There seemed to be a lot of police sitting in the land rover. They started to come to me and talk to me. They told me to get in the land rover and for a horrible moment I thought that they were taking me to the children’s home. I didn’t believe that they had come to my school to pick me up to take me away. I started to laugh.
I got into the land rover and they asked me why I was laughing. I said I laughted because I was good at it which made them all laugh. One of them said that I was brazen to laugh as I wasnt a very nice person and I had upset my poor grandfather. We arrived at my house to find Mr. Sonny Ward already waiting with my grandparents. We all sat in our rather small sitting room and I found out that my grandfather had asked the police to pick me up. He told them that I was getting out of hand. I remember that the head of the police Mr. Martin was there and he told my grandfather off for being nasty to me. My poor grandmother was sobbing her heart out. As she also was convinced that I would be put in the childrens home. In the end I didnt get put in the children’s home. My grandfather was told not to call anymore as it was a waste of police time.
I continued not to like Hartford School. There wasn’t anything wrong with the school except that I just didn’t fit in. I also missed the teachers from Longwood School. I was very fond of Miss. Heather George. She was one of the teachers who was never unkind to me.
There was another teacher that would tell a certain child that I played with happily at Longwood Junior not to play with me because I was a bad influence. Those remarks made me feel worthless and I met that teacher later on at a reunion. She looked very embarassed when she saw me. I spoke to her anyway.
I remember that We had a needlework class this was run by Mrs. Clingham and all the the girls in my class were given a piece of white cloth that we would do various stitching. While the other girls did well with there stitching my piece of cloth just got dirtier and dirtier. I was unable to do any of the stitching and Mrs. Clingham wondered if there was any point in me coming the needlework class.
I think that all the abuse from my grandfather, seeing my grandmother upset every day, my mother not writing to me anymore, Mrs. Mercury canning me and trying to avoid young boys dragging me into flex bushes was to much to cope with and I was to unhappy to learn and had simply given up on everything. I was always counting the days when I could leave school and get a job and rent a house. This way I could get away from my abusive grandfather. I wasn’t doing very well at school so I would hope to get a cleaning job at someones house but it would at least be a job.
And then I could live in peace.
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