First Years at School

A little private school in Strathclyde was school for me for about three or four years. The school was owned and taught by three spinsters, the misses Phillips.

Miss Phil the youngest was pink and plump and pinafored. She taught the first year pupils. Her classroom was on the verandah of the large, two storied, colonial home. The young pupils sat on wooden benches and wrote on slates. I really don't remember much of those days, learning to write and read, to add, subtract and divide. We also had to recite our times tables from two to twelve. Our playground was the driveway and small garden that bordered it.

The eldest Miss Phil taught the 'big' school across the road. It was so called, not because of it's size, but because the older children were taught there. Wooden benches were again our seats, but we also had wooden desks and used proper lined exercise books. We were sometimes allowed to use pens. In those days the pens were commonly those that needed to be dipped regularly into the ink. Some lucky children possessed fountain pens with its own reservoir which could be refilled from the same ink bottle used for the dipping type, but they were messy in the clumsy fists of the under nines. Mummy bought me a ball point pen that needed neither to be refilled or dipped. I was the envy of my fellow students as it was the only one in the school at the time. Royal blue plastic with the same colour, sticky ink that leaked on everything - my fingers, blotches on the paper, clothing, my pencil case and book bag - causing a huge mess.

The third Miss Phil was the housekeeper and cook. She didn't teach us but made fudge and 'kisses' (small meringues) every Friday. We were reminded on Thursdays to bring our pennies to school on Friday so that we could purchase a piece of fudge and a kiss. Really, for me it was like carrying coals to Newcastle as Granny Richardson made much nicer ones. Miss Phil's tended to be chewy like caramel, while Granny's were crisp outside and soft inside and melted away in the mouth. Chocolate and plain were the choices for the squares of fudge and pink or white or apple green for the kisses. I didn't always remember to bring the money or was not given any. I seem to remember some sort of low barricade to keep the pupils from venturing into the area of the verandah onto which the kitchen opened. That was where the third Miss Phil worked and sat and ate her lunch together with one or other of her sisters. It was also where the pupils lined up on Friday to purchase their goodies. Like being in a real shop.

Miss Phil the younger would allow us to go to the toilet on our own. It was at the top of the stairs in a largish room that opened immediately opposite the top of the long polished mahogany staircase. There was a small wooden step in front of the pan for us to use to climb onto the seat. I hated going there as the interior of the house was dark and furnished with old, heavy, mahogany furniture. There was nothing much to see upstairs, but I had a dread of ghosts and was convinced that there would be one up there to either grab me or haunt me in some unspeakable way. The bedrooms must have been up there, but the doors were always kept closed.

I don't know if my memory serves me correctly, but there was a fourth Miss Phil who spent her time in a room upstairs in the care of a nurse as she was in some way either crazy or handicapped. Or perhaps it was my vivid imagination that created her.

While in the lower school I was unkindly given the name "Miss Nosey". It was not known that I had myopia (extremely short sighted), so in order to be able to examine the many pretty or interesting ornaments the Misses Phillips kept on tables and cabinets, I needed to pick them up and bring them close to my face. All thoughts of parental instructions of 'don't touch' completely escaped me. So "Miss Nosey" it was. Most children are curious about things around them, so it was me obeying my natural instincts. The adults never considered that it was a vision problem; just that I was disobedient, naughty and nosey.

When I moved to the 'big' school across the road, the toilet there was not much better. It was down the corridor and up a few steps. By then the pupils were mostly taller and I don't remember there being a step to help us get onto the toilet seat.

However, ghosts were alive and well there too. At the end of the corridor and next to the few steps up to the toilet and bedrooms, was a set of dark, dusty, grey wooden steps down into the kitchen area. It was always dark down there as the windows and doors were never opened and were protected by shutters to keep out the light. Nobody lived there. A draught wafted up from the darkness smelling of cobwebs and damp; a very scary place for a little girl with a vivid imagination. Sometimes, the boys and braver girls than I would tiptoe down to the kitchen, but never got very far before screaming and rushing back upstairs with a few more timid students on the steps behind them, screaming at they knew not what!

The journey to Strathclyde was always by foot. Sometimes Aunt Jean or Mummy or the maid, Thelma, would walk me to school. Wendy would come along for the outing, usually in a pram or sitting on the cross bar of a bicycle. Everybody loved to see Wendy. She had a head of brown shiny curls and blue-green eyes. She was not at all shy, or so it seemed to me at the time. For a year the two of us were at school there, me in the 'big' school and Wendy on the verandah with Miss Phil the youngest, the pink one.

I don't recall whether it was Wendy's first day of school, or just one of her outings to deliver me safely, but she had on new underwear. On her arrival she lifted up her skirt and said to the assembled onlookers "Look at my pretty panties". This story has been related within the family many times over as worthy of repeating.

The distance from King Street to Strathclyde was about one and a half miles. We walked to the end of King Street and turned right onto Baxter's Road, soon coming to a very large cross roads. The one on the left was Westbury Road and the one straight ahead, the one we took, was Barbarees Hill. Many fine old homes populated the hill. One family we knew, and I'm not sure how we met them or knew about them, was the Blanchettes. They had three children of about my age - Monica, Victor and Richard. They lived in a two storied stone building, painted in pink, on the left hand side going up. I always made sure that I checked with my dodgy eyes for any sign of child life in or around the home. Mr Stanley Blanchette eventually became the Governor General in Barbados and before that was the general manager of his family business, Barbados Hardware on Swan Street. Daddy knew Puffoot, as Mr Blanchette was nicknamed, from his school days at Combermere School.

Continuing along Barbarees Hill I passed the long driveway going to Dr Harry Bailey, Granny Richardson's trusted and well liked doctor. That was also on the left and not too far from the entrance to Strathclyde on the right hand side.

The two school houses were on both sides of the road in the Strathclyde subdivision, but the residence of the Misses Phillips and the first school I went to was on the left hand side on the corner of Strathclyde Crescent and Strathclyde Drive. The home had in and out driveways and still stands, although the 'big' school on the other side has been demolished.

My promotion to the 'big' school changed things for me. Probably not for the better, as it gave me a further indication of my own stupidity. Sign number one was the fact that I could not see things pointed to that everybody else could see, but also, at the 'big' school we had rankings in class and every test, end of term report or quiz saw me come third in a class of three pupils. The bottom. The dunce. The entirely stupid girl. I cannot entirely blame me eyesight for this. It could be that the two other students were smarter than I was. And I have no idea if my marks were all good ones; the fact remained I was bottom of the class. When I left that school and enrolled at the Ursuline Convent, Prep 2, I was ranked in the top 5 out of 20 or more students. Nevertheless I enjoyed being at Miss Phils' school - all, except for the boys who teased me in the playground by chasing me, and the other girls, with snails.

One playtime I found some little lizard eggs under a hedge. I put them in my dress pocket and was horrified to feel something moving. I put my hand in to feel if the eggs were rolling around, only to have a tiny lizard jump onto and run up my hand and out of my pocket. I never collected eggs in my pocket again after that scare.

At the 'big' school Miss Phil the elder played the violin every morning before classes began. She must have been the gardener at weekends as I remember her as being tanned. I never liked the look of the violin because Miss Phil the eldest had large jowls which spread out over the chin rest of the instrument as she played. The ugly jowls surely, I thought, were caused by the violin.

The morning ritual was to sing the National Anthem - God Save the King. Two students were chosen to hold two large flags on poles while facing each other. The students faced each other with the flags crossed. At the end of the anthem they tapped the poles together and we all saluted. The flags were then rolled up and put away. The older students, usually a girl, was given the very responsible job of putting away the violin and bow in it's case, along with the small cake of gum which was used on the bow strings. On our birthdays we were allowed, as a very special treat, to hold one of the flags. I may have been there for one year only as I can remember only having this privilege once only.

Some of the subjects we studied at the 'big' school were, besides arithmetic, reading and writing, geography, french language and 'meaning spelling'. I loved it all. I was looking forward to doing the geography as I had heard the older children reading out loud from the text book and I just loved the sound of the big words they read. The one word that has fascinated and remained with me all my life is 'hemisphere'. I so wanted to learn geography so that I could say that word out loud in class. I had no idea what it meant, but it sounded important. It was like music to me. The text went something like this:

"The earth is divided into two hemispheres. The northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere. These hemispheres are divided by the equator"

I cannot remember the name of the text book, but would love to read it once more.

French was another popular subject with me and I can remember to this day the french words that I learned during that short period. I loved the idea of speaking a foreign language. La plume de ma tante. My aunt's pen. la fenetre, the window, la porte, the door.

In another chapter I will write about going to church, both with the Misses Phillips and with my Mother.