Wicor School

In Wicor County Primary school I felt like a big fish in a small pond and I loved it. From memory, I had lots of friends, I was resonantly able to handle the academic side and I could talk freely to girls. 

Having said that, I had two or three very close friends (Paul Fleet, Jeffery Hill and ?) and I would occasionally walk one girl home (Jennifer Fornton (now Frost). 

I would walk to school with my mother and Sister and certainly in the last couple of years, I would walk home on my own. This sometimes involved walking along the gutters of the side streets looking for nuts, bolts, the occasional coin and on hot days, tar bubbles popping through the loose stones on the road. 

It was so long ago that I am not sure which memory was from which school. I do remember a grumpy maths teacher and a classroom that was no more than a large wooden hut. He had a wooden ruler with plastic bands spaced every 10cm or so to re-enforce it when striking children by the palm. I was hardly ever in trouble except for one occasion. 

I was asked by my teacher to get something from a cupboard and no matter how hard I looked I could not see it. The teacher, in desperation I suppose, grabbed me by the neck to point my nose to whatever I was supposed to be getting. 

The same teacher asked me what word would describe an equal score, as part of a piece I was writing. She said "tie" and all I could think of was a piece of cloth round my neck. She  "how about a draw?" And all I could think of was a sliding box to keep things in (drawer). She left exasperated and I learnt that the English language is strange. 

I was heartbroken when Jeffery moved away as we were very close and regularly walked home together. 

Although I am sure I was popular at that school, I do remember spending a lot of my time pretending to be a steam engine walking up and down the running track marked on the school field. 

When I moved from this school to "big school" I had a big shock. Partly because most of the kids I knew went to another school, mostly because of a boy that Jane and I met during that school holiday. 

I regularly cycled the area with Jane without a care in the world. On two occasions that summer we met the same boy (a year or two older than me, stocky and rather disheveled). On both occasions he and his mates cornered us and laid down some threat of physical violence, ending in a threat to get me when I started the new big school.