No one was more surprised than me to find myself as a register monitor. I collected the register one morning and ensured its passage back to the office before the first lesson. Later, I collected it again for a teacher to check the afternoon attendance. I realised quickly that the system the school used to enter a ‘present’ mark could easily be manipulated to my advantage, due to a stroke of good luck. Mum had provided me with an absence note with no date on for the dentist. My form teacher made a note of it in the register and I
Having spoken to a friend Shirley, she filled me in on a cookery lesson incident where it was wrongly assumed I was the culprit of a misdemeanour and got slippered for it. I have vague memories of it and now, having the details related, I can’t see how I forgot it, or perhaps I did just want to forget it. It was just the girls that did cookery, unlike now. This particular lesson we spent a lot of time preparing either a pie or a flan to be cooked the oven. There was a range of ovens around the room
We had a system at school for dealing with girls who we considered had been out of order or had snitched on another girl. It was quite simple really. We lined up along the gym wall and formed a tunnel with our hands on the wall and forced her to enter one end and exit the other. She had no choice, she would have been pushed in if necessary and as she made her way to the other end she would be kicked or get her bottom smacked as she passed by. The system was in place long before I
I was late for biology. Lateness with Miss H had happened for a couple of the girls previously and the resulting bottoms were not something you courted. I ran down the corridor slap bang into my art teacher; the drawings she was carrying flew everywhere. I was very apologetic and helped her pick the drawings up. She knew I was late and delayed me as long as she could before demanding I see her at 4 o’clock. I scurried along to the biology lab, only to find a line of girls still waiting for Miss H. It occurred to me
Twice a year we heard the dreaded words ‘it’s cross country today, girls’. My heart would sink for I hated it. It was a run round the school and its perimeter rather than a cross country. It was something I could easily achieve but didn’t want to. As a sixteen year old, running around the school in your knickers didn’t seem cool so I made the decision to duck into a gap where dustbins were stored. I knew the line would pass the other side on its way back and re-joining would be easy. I realised idea my was not original
I had been told that by mixing a few simple garden chemicals you could make a gunpowder for home made fireworks, and as we searched Sue’s dad’s garden shed it was obvious that this was just the place to find them. Weed killer, saltpetre and charcoal were among the ingredients required and all were available in the shed. As normal with two teenage girls, it was not something we had thought through very well as we had no idea how we were going to use the mixture once we had mixed it, plus if the mixture worked, given Sue’s addiction
At break time I reported back, guessing what she had in mind for me as I and a number of girls had been there before. Miss H had a teenage family of her own and made full use of her training when it came to discipline at home, so she kept telling us. As expected, her own stool, which stood taller than ours, was in position awaiting my arrival as was a slipper which was resting on her table. She never minced her words and with “immature” and “grow up” ringing in my ears I removed my blazer and positioned
I like many other pupils, I was not enthused by one of my art teachers. She wasn’t particularly pretty, she was overweight and wore horrible long floral dresses with ankle socks and flat leather sandals which she could slip off to wallop the bottom of anyone she deemed to be needing it. Its use was frequent, packed a potent sting and was not solely for boys, as numerous girls, including myself, found out. In an all-girls art class, I was messing about with two girls opposite. We were throwing a cleaning cloth back and to until I got spotted, just
Twice a year we heard the dreaded words: “It’s cross country today, girls.” my heart would sink for I hated it. It was a run round the school and its perimeter, more than a cross country, and something I could easily achieve but didn’t want to. As a sixteen year old running around the school in your knickers didn’t seem cool, so I ducked into a gap where dustbins were stored, knowing the line would pass the other side on its way back. Not only was the idea not original, I found myself with a bunch of other girls pulling
It was history. I was sat at the back as usual for a lesson I hated. This was the last term for we sixteen year olds, before our exams, and Mr Ellis was at his board trying to cram our minds with knowledge. I must have been drifting in my thoughts when there was a crash against the back wall, which brought me back to reality rather quickly. It was the wooden board duster on the floor next to me. Mr Ellis turned back to his board and, without thinking, I picked up the duster and prepared myself to throw