Lives less Ordinary

I'm sure that we ought to have been grateful for our new home. Afterall it was in the same street as our grandparents but we were close to the fields and two ponds; created by two bombs dropped during WW2. I was however, stunned with the differences within our new home but at least it was a place where we could continue with our lives.

   My new school, once a girls charity school, was in the belly of our village. I still had free school dinners and so remained at school all day. My reluctant feet took me past the infant school, where my two brothers went. Past the Quaker house which, I later learnt, hadn't been used for sometime. Our new town was predominantly boot and shoe occupation.  But we were surrounded by fields and meandering lanes down to the watermill, no longer functioning, and close to where steam trains cast what I saw as magical puffs of smoke and shadows whilst cutting through our countryside and past the ironstone workings and the weetabix factory.

 I didn't like leaving my mum nor the thought of the school I was destined for. With trepidation I joined the end of the queue and followed the girls through the doorway, past the school hall and into my classroom. I was hearing words such as kent,wunt,enngunu,peps,pop and gal; all foreign words to the cockey girl I was then. Once in the classroom I sat wedged behind a long row of desks. An ink-pot between two girls. Once seated our names would be called and then our school mistress, who ruled her charges absolutely, requested we waved our handkerchiefs in the air. There then followed us reciting our times table and woe betide anyone who got lost within the chants. I soon realised why the girls were frightened of this particular teacher and did my best not to annoy her. My main problem, however, was my needlework/knitting skills. By the time I'd completed knitting a pair of slippers I'd been at school for almost a year. I was still the mouse in the fold and still doing my best to fit in. Nobody wants to be different do they?.