Reflections on 1973

Early in the year I was at a pre school called St Theresa’s. The blazer had an oak tree as an emblem.

One day, my dad took me to school. He opened the car door at the end of the school drive and said “There’s where you go. You’re a big boy now so you can walk on your own now. I got out the car, and my dad drove off to work.

When I got to the school, it was closed. There was a man there who I didn’t know and another boy. I didn’t really know what was going on. After what seemed like six hours, but was probably only ten minutes, my mum arrived in her Morris Minor with my brother and sister in the back and took me home. It turned out to be half term and there was no school that day.

Later that morning I was helping my mum make her bed. She asked why I didn’t play in the sandpit around the back.

In September, I started at St Peter’s primary school. On the first day, I met Kieran (then spelt Ciaran). We looked at a poster of the ocean on the wall in the classroom. It was in layers, with a whale at the bottom, a deep sea diver in the middle, different fish and corals and a scuba diver in the middle.

I said that the whale was going to swim up to the diver and eat his belly button. Ciaran laughed really loudly at that. He was my friend after that.

We learned the alphabet that was written across the top of three blackboards. I still group the letters in that way: A-G, H-O and P-Z. The months of the year were on a card, in 4 rows of three, each with a picture. But somehow I don’t retain that grouping. Instead I view them in three groups: Jan-Mar, Apr-Aug and Sep-Dec.

I used to get the coach back home after. We’d queue up in the school hall, and my mum would meet me at the bus stop outside Wheels, near our home in Bookham.