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education-memoriesls11 · 4 years ago

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Nursery to Reception - Part Timer to “Big School” and “Pizzagate”

From those days I can still visually picture how we all looked and were, the top music star of the time was Michael Jackson and my long time friend Shayn Thomas is always shocked to remember that I can still picture that he used to have his “thriller” T-Shirt on at school (no uniform at BPS in those days we could wear what we wanted). As far as nursery goes from memory it felt like one day I was spending days watching tv, going out on the Cardinal Field or playing with my pals round at the twins Duane and Danny’s house, then suddenly I was told “you’re off to nursery tomorrow” by my mother, so off I went with her, I remember first seeing the building, much of which has remained the same to this day with its dark brick oblongs with the white frames and fascias and green pipes as it had at the time.

I used to come up past the house then known as “The Convent of The Most Holy Cross and Passion” on Town Street, where you could see the school building in the distance, then we would go up the winding path by the terminus to the nursery. In those days we used to be scared of the Nuns as some of them almost had a ghostly appearance but in later life whenever we said a good morning to them they were always found to be polite, its now a house known as “The Old Convent” as you would expect.

At this point that The Nursery and one Classroom next to the big playground were the only “Huts” at the school, the Portakabins were still to be dropped in. Of course, the first job of the day was getting your pumps on which we brought in our pump bags, I had the same one all through primary school hand made by my Aunty Diane. We were taught by Miss Holgate and Mrs Allen, Miss Holgate had a patient calm and welcoming manner, at nursery I don’t think I ever had a day when I didn’t want to bound in and look forward to it.

Miss Holgate was one for engaging the group in creative activities, most of which used to involve those old little white gluesticks and pots of glitter, or plenty of scribbling with crayons, Mrs Allen's forte was in storytelling, she was at both that school then Hugh Gaitskell all through my primary years, she had a preference for dressing in trouser suit/waistcoat combos when at Beeston Primary, with her short cut and tinted glasses, we must have been one of her early classes before she moved into single class teaching. She could be calm and soft-spoken with a slight depth to her voice but did not take any nonsense and the tone she used if there was any made that clear to not go too far.

Playtimes were spent between us all either trying to cram ourselves into the little wendy house in the playground, throwing coits on to poles, playing with the rocking horse or other similar toys or trying to get first dibs on an old fashioned metal tricycle so we could dash around doing circles of the yard, it was much faster than all the other plastic bikes and push cars and made you feel a bit more grown-up. The days were always finished off with a little story on the carpet and it was just a really enjoyable introduction to school life.

The one-story I remember in particular then we were read a few times was "Funnybones" with the opening line of “in a dark dark house on a dark dark night” Mrs Allen did a great interpretation of it. Some of my longest and oldest friends were in this class including Ben Woodburn, Shayn Thomas and Phil Mitchell, we all grew up on the Cardinals and Waincliffes and in Ben and Phil's case spent our entire school years in the same schools. Some of the other kids locally would go to the nursery in Cottingley at that time, who would then come and join us for “Big school”.

Beeston Primary Reception Class 0W / RW

For my introduction to mainstream schooling reception I was taught by the then Miss Harriet Wood (later to be Mrs Ansell-Wood), she was a fantastic teacher, she had a very calming presence, Tall with a blonde bob, a smile for everyone and welcoming manner about her, in later life she also then moved on to what became Hugh Gaitskell primary after the middle schools were abolished in the area, in what has become a recurring theme over the years some of my friends who came from different parts of Yorkshire, and even Europe became work colleagues with her in their early teaching days and every one of them has nothing but kind words to speak of her.

One particular time I was falsely accused of filling a crisp packet full of water and throwing it on my older mate Duane's head, a likely story indeed I wouldn’t even know how to do that back then, despite being an unproven allegation I was taken inside for a dressing down, At first I was just defensive and angry in my reaction to the point of being hysterical due to knowing I'd not done this. I remember Miss Wood did a marvellous job of calmly settling me back down, giving a reassuring hand until I could explain myself and all was forgiven. Kindness and understanding always live long in the memory.

We would work our way through the colours and levels of our maths books, learning to read via the Collins “one two three and away” books, learning about the Village with 3 corners and its inhabitants Roger Red Hat, Billy Blue hat and Jonathan and Jennifer Yellow Hat (The first Hart to Hart reference in this series).

We learnt to put words and sentences together using “Letra sets” that were in giant binders and looking back on it reminded me a bit like a more word-based version of having your scrabble letters out but filling in the words!

We would go to the main hall and take part in “music and movement” which involved sort of classical piece from the sound system playing while we would attempt various shapes or swop from hopping to trotting, skipping or other such movements to the soundtrack. With a few games of musical statues thrown in at the end for good measure!

If we did PE then the old blue mats would be brought out for doing little forward rolls and the old balance beams with the hooks on and various other bits of apparatus would appear, all the time this was carried out barefoot which in winter was freezing as well as being very sore on your feet and not so fun a landing if you took a wrong step.

On my little table, I was sat with Richard Leach (who met his wife at the school who are happily together to this day), Matthew Jeffers, James Ratcliffe, Sophie Grant and Stephen Hullock.

Stephens grandfather was the school caretaker for many years, there were a lot of days you would see him when we were out in the playground, he would be on the roof of the school retrieving various footballs and items that had been dispatched to the roof the night before by the kids from the Heathcroft estate during their football games or whatever other antics they chose to partake in, he would be greeted by a cheer as some of the balls were thrown back down into the playground. Talking of which Ste’s Grandfather on his dads' side was none other than Leeds United legend Jimmy Dunn, his other grandkids also went to our school and you can find his name on Bremner Square at the ground, check it out and if he is a player from before your time read him up and learn about his career he was a top player.

The year group was based at the back end of the school that faces the Heathcroft Estate, the classrooms would usually have one wall separating them at the side with a large curtain at the end of each classroom being our way in and out which would then be closed for privacy at reading times our more “creative” play and lessons took place in what was known as the “Wet Area” where we would be able to get up to the more messy types of play, such as sandpits and making Papier Mache items by sticking bits of old newspaper to balloons, the area was overseen by Miss Barker (she still had her maiden name then) who also had the job of patching us up if we fell in the playground complete with that yellow spray that used to sting like mad and leave you smelling like TCP. Miss Barker always had a bit of glam and somehow managed to work in the messiest part of school yet always be dressed immaculately and still end the day still resembling Joan Collins.

The neighbouring class was Mr Johnson's class (later to be the Husband of the aforementioned Miss Barker). Mr Johnson was a big part of the school for many years, he had a great positive influence on many of us growing up, he was keen on his sport and football which i will go into more in later chapters, in his younger days, he had a moustache to rival Nigel Mansell but a lot more hair on top, at playtimes our year group had the little playground facing down towards the hill where we would run around playing “What time is it Mr Wolf” or trying to do the hops skips and jumps on the painted sections on the playground floor, recreate our favourite superheroes by buttoning our coats into capes battling whichever poor soul was nominated to be the baddie.

It was also in this playground where I first found out about one of my lifelong passions, before then I only knew of Everton and Liverpool as football teams (I was only 4 years old so only ever saw the cup final up to then, which you may recall was played out by those two teams in 1986), we always saw the old gigantic floodlights and stadium down the hill, you couldn’t miss them, then one day in the distance I noticed some men were running up and down Fullerton Park in white tops, when it was still the training ground, I asked Mr Johnson who was on Duty, in his normal attire of polo shirt and jeans with this white winter coat and coffee in hand, “what's that down there sir” to which he then told me it was a football team called Leeds United, I asked him if they played Liverpool but he said they played in division two, so I credit him with the introduction as from there I looked out for them on the local news or tv when football was mentioned and along with the encouragement of my neighbours from the Wales family i was set to be a fan for life. Nice one sir!

This fact was also further made clear to us throughout the years by Mrs Robinson, one of the teachers who lived locally, she was a class teacher of many of my friends over the years and occasionally took the odd lesson of mine, she was notably famous in school for having an array of Leeds United artefacts both in her car and in the classroom, she would also wear the Leeds Hats or Scarves if on duty in winter, She also had a fondness for collecting items relating to Owls, another symbol of the city, she had a great rapport with all the students in the school and was seen as being very cool, in those days everyone at school still supported Leeds and any other team was out of the question, much like it hopefully will again in this new rebirth we are seeing at the moment.

Going back to the “wet area” this is also where the younger year groups would be served lunch as we had our first experience of “school dinners” the dinners at BPS were generally very good, the kitchen led by Mrs Willens and her team, which at then included Mrs Slight (who I now know as Gill, my classmate Amy’s mum and a good friend of my family Sunday afternoon pub trips and Darts and Dominoes) who later also then became a lunchtime supervisor.

We were served dinners on giant plastic trays that were split into segments, one for the main meal, one for your drink and biscuit (the second one after the then customary little bottle of milk in the morning part of the day) and one for the dessert or pudding as we say in LS11.

I used to love the puddings, Jam sponge or Chocolate Cake, always followed with a generous ladle of custard served from giant metal urns, and the top one which was the Lemon Meringue, which was like a new world to me in terms of food but I loved it, however, I was never as fussy about the main meal, which would get me into trouble from time to time, This is how we would also first encounter the famous Lunchtime Supervisor Miss Mary and her cohorts which at this point in time included Mrs Preston and Mrs Shipman (whose son Damian was also in my class) .

Once we had all dutifully lined up to get our dinners and then take them back to our places, in what became commonplace at the school the dinner ladies would circle the tables armed with their dishcloths, in between wiping up they would be checking first to make sure that no one was misbehaving or throwing food around, but their key function at that time seemed to be to ensure that we all ate properly or as much as possible, once we had reached however far we could manage with our main we would have to sit with our hands up and then ask their permission to “turn round” aka “I've had enough of that can I have my dessert please” in our inner thinking. It was at their discretion if we were permitted to do this unless you had eaten all the lot which meant you could turn round anyway.

One of these particular times had a lasting impression on my food habits for many years. Pizza was on the menu, I'd never had it before, didn’t like the look, smell or taste of it (nothing like the ones you get in a shop) I couldn’t face it. Asked to turn round, Mrs Preston with her dark bob and circular glasses was not having any of it, neither was I, so 15 minutes later I was still sat there, in tears being told I could not leave my seat until I ate it, everyone else was in the playground by this time, it was a battle of wits and in the end, I was defeated and had to sit there and eat every mouthful of it until it was gone, at which point I was done in, had my pudding then got to join my friends for about 5 minutes before we had to go back in, red-faced puffy-eyed, it must have had a lasting effect, it was noted in future by my parents that I didn't like pizza and it put me off eating it until my mid-20s, it goes to show that some of Sigmund Freud's theories definitely hold some gravitas!

Although that encounter with her was a bit more traumatic, Mrs Preston was only doing what all the dinner ladies then would do, a few friends have told me they had similar encounters with the other dinner ladies with the foods they were not keen on, they were trying to ensure we eat and try different foods, she never held it against me as the rest of the time she was always a very approachable and had a neighbourly manner about her, she has been a stalwart and mainstay of the school for decades and moved into working in the school offices in later years. She has given decades of her life to that school and is to be applauded.

A true servant to the school on every level.

#beeston leeds cardinals schooldays LS11 memories

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