Starting School

During the war all available metal was melted down to make armaments. So - no biscuit tins, Mecchano sets or paint tins - I mean artist's paints, of course. Those were the only sort I was concerned with at age three and three quarters, when I started school. (Children who had lost a parent were allowed to begin early, despite the schools being very overcrowded.) Artistic talent ran in the family and my mother encouraged me to draw and paint from an early age. Paints were available only as loose little cuboids, bought by the half dozen and screwed into brown paper bags. My mother would wet one side of them and stick them round the rim of an old plate, which could then be used as a palette. And that was the cause of my blotting my copy-book on my very first day.

I loved school straight off - all these children to play and have fun with, run round the playground with at break, instead of just boring old Auntie Kate. And I made friends with a girl called Evelyn, even younger than me, whose mother had died when she was a baby, and who is still my best friend. But some things confused me. My mother had said I might be allowed to do some painting, so when the teacher, Miss Jones, a lady with a black moustache, put a little pile of brightly coloured cuboid shapes on the table in front of me I thought, 'Goody! Paints!' They were a lot bigger than the ones I was used to - all the better to paint great pictures with! But, though I waited, and waited, the teacher didn't bring me any paper, paint-brush or water. Each child had been given something different to play with, and nobody else had been given paints. There was a shoelace on our table, which didn't seem to belong to any of our activities. Tired of waiting, I wet my finger on my tongue and rubbed my fingertip on one of the paints to see what the colour looked like on my hand. Disappointingly, no colour came off. A roar from overhead:

'How dare you spit on my beads!' was accompanied by Miss Jones picking up my hand and giving it a sharp slap. Then she went away again. I stared at my table companions, mystified and rather upset. Beads? Square beads? What was I supposed to do with them?

'Thread them on this shoelace,' advised the oldest girl at the table.

'But they haven't got any holes in!'

'Oh, yes they have.' She turned one of them to show two holes on the narrow sides, where you wouldn't think of looking. Then she tied a knot at one end of the shoelace and expertly threaded three of the cuboid beads onto it. She had done this before! Following her lead, I quickly threaded all the remaining pieces of coloured wood and was rewarded with a 'Good girl, Anita! That's right,' as Miss Jones hurried past again. So I was back in favour. But I thought painting would have been a lot more fun. And I'd never seen anyone wear such a strange necklace as the one with big square beads on a shoelace.

Auntie Kate fetched me home for lunch then took me back. By this time it was raining so we couldn't go out to play. Every now and then Miss Jones would tell a child to go to the 'office'. Although she spoke in Welsh she said this word in English, instead of using the Welsh word 'swyddfa'. When she said this to me I went outside as the others had done and wondered where to go. I couldn't see anywhere that looked remotely like an office in our school yard. So I skipped around happily in the drizzle. Soon Miss Jones came out looking cross, grabbed my arm and took me in again, scolding me for running around in the rain. Then she asked an older girl to take me to the 'office', which turned out to be the outside toilet! We called it the 'lavatory' in our house, but I'd never heard anyone call it an 'office'.