Starting School

 Parkhead Primary School

 

As you will know from my previous blog, I have a twin sister Isabel and of course she and I started school at the same time.

 

A bit about the schools first, we began primary school in the old primary school in West Calder, and it was very close to the old West Calder High School. Eventually we moved from the old Primary School to the sparkling new Parhead Primary School which is still going to this day. Then the same happened again, we attended the old high school in West Calder then we were moved to the brand new and enormous looking new West Calder High School in Polbeth. It is now a housing estate and there is another new West Calder High School situated between Polbeth and West Calder. In those days there were no computers, calculators or mobile phones, it was all done my brain (such as it was), pencil, paper and eraser.  In fact now I remember we also had inkwells on our desks in Primary School and learned to use pens with nibs and blotting paper, most young people now adays wouldn't know what they were. The new High School was amazing because it had a swimming pool and we were taught to swim. Gym was never my thing and I could never seem to master climbing a rope!

New schools though felt new, with

brand new furniture, brand new blackboards but same old teachers, bless them all!

 

I wanted to tell you about my first day at school, my Mum got Isabel and I all dressed up in our new school uniforms and we had to get the bus into school.  My Mum led us into the room where all the new, rather, nervous pupils with their parents were. I learned later that my Mum was worried about how Isabel would be on her first day but it was needless, Isabel was like a duck to water, absolutely no problem. Me on the other hand, well, how could my Mother leave me with all those strangers, I bawled and I seem to remember hanging onto my Mother's ankles when she tried to leave.

 

There is a footnote to the school story. My little sister, Helen, was 4 years younger than us and she watched us going to school each day and couldn't (as I found out later) wait to start. She must have been about 4 when one of my Mum's friends thankfully came upon young Helen with a vanity case in hand standing at the bus stop determined she was going to school and returned her home.  My Mother thought she was out playing with her friends, the little scamp! That feeling of wanting to go to school I am sure didn't last when she had to go to school!