From the past

Reminders

Thinking about my memories of the Life Boys/church, and now the production of photo's via facebook from the family archives brings to mind  happenings that still produce memories.

This picture brings to mind probably one of my earliest memories at just over 4 years old (the 3rd one along on the left at the front is me) and it was the Queens Coronation street party held somewhere close to the Edgware Road in London.Look at the jumpers to find my two younger brothers
I can't really remember the party in any detail, but I remember a song, probably because of my aunt Alice, it was this one, not the same version though.



Sometime during my Junior school days, after a sickness break for mumps, or something like that, we had a arithmetic test and I can remember what may have been my first use of logic, or common sense , when I realised none of the ounces went above 15 and got praise for my  correct answers.
Arithmetic was always my best practical subject, geometry and algebra never seemed to be worth the effort.
I've touched upon my earliest public appearance in this Blog before, so won't remind myself of my red face version of a robin redbreast song.....too late.
I remember at 11 the test we took to see if we were up to 11 plus standard for grammar school, and we were confronted by a booklet of mensa type questions.
Something we had never seen before, my logic, and that of many others, defeated us that day.
But I have often wondered, being council estate kids, if we were chosen not to be grammar school types, because none of the school ended up taking the 11 plus!!

Shortly after, sitting at the back in my soon to be secondary school hall, taking a blackboard written test with over 150 others, and realising for the first time...I needed glasses...too late, streamed as average.
After that, I'm of a view with the benefit of hindsight, I only ever did enough to get average results in most subjects.
My GCE studying years were spent mainly on the sports field, or painting the scenery for the girls school plays. I got Art & Craft O level...just!
Our teachers on the whole weren't interested in teaching, most had a sports grounding and were mainly Welsh, so rugby, football, athletics and cricket got higher priority.
I represented the school in all of those.
We were segregated from the girls throughout the secondary school years, so I was a late developer in meeting female friends. Being a basically shy individual didn't help.

One thing I  learned, from really early on probably from 11 years old, is that somebody is always out to map your status/course in life, it's up to you, the individual, not to let that happen.

It worked for me, 50 years later I still don't, and won't fit into the mould that others want!


Cricket

Took to my bed when rain stopped play at lunchtime,quite satisfied.
Had another listen at about 4:30am extremely satisfied, but not confident.
Woke again later than usual at 8am for the news, more confident but not yet convinced.

My view remains, we let them off the hook, and made them look better than they are in the last test.
 
We shall see.