Jock and attorney. Also part of the 'naughty' group marked with suspensions and countless saturday morning detentions.
As I was at school during the forties and fifties I don't recognise any of these types. What I do know is if the OP was at my school he would have been in the bottom stream and mocked for his inability to spell or punctuate and his very poor use of grammar. Add to that his use of Americanisms and the children would have turned their backs on him when they saw him coming. A bit like the way Sarkozy treated Cameron at the Euro Conference recently. Bullying wasn't as commonplace as it is today although we did have a school bully who was threatening but never hit anyone. I think as schoolchildren at that time we all had a number of things in common. We all wore short trousers and jumpers knitted by our mums and had holes in our shoes with pieces of card inserted until our she could afford for the cobbler to put a new sole on them. We only had one coat, a raincoat. We often wore wellingtons or plimsolls until our one pair of shoes came back from the cobblers. We had hardly any money. There was no junk food and we were always hungry. A food treat was a bowl of rice pudding with a spoonful of jam in the middle. We were all skinny by comparison with today's children. Most of our wakening hours was spent out of doors and we were really fit. We hardly ever went in a car but cycled everwhere or walked. When we went swimming it was in the river or the outdoor lido which was unheated! We had to walk to school and home again by ourselves from the age of six. We made a lot of our own playthings. We all went to the same school where we boys were routinely caned for the slightest misdemeanour. We had to eat Malt Extract, swallow cod liver oil and had loads of proper vegetables with every meal. Most of the food we ate my father grew in our garden and we kept chickens. We hardly ever saw my dad as he was always at work or in the garden. The only thing to do indoors was to read a book (and I used read at least three books a week and still do) or listen to the radio. We had no central heating and in the winter our bedrooms were freezing. We only had cold lino on the floor downstairs and bare floorboards upstairs as we couldn't afford to cover them not as a style statement. We used to have to wear the same grey shirt to school for a week! We had a religous service in school everyday and went to church twice on Sundays. The soft, easy, pampered, spoilt, lazy, overfed, warm cozy existence of today's children was something we could only dream about.
OH dear.........Not sure I can agree wholeheartedly about your very last statement.......however I can confirm the rest as fact. Although as previously stated my only run ins with the Head master and Canes was because I sorted the school bullies out. Although I do remember other instances as well it was not the common occurrences with me as it was with some others. It was common for the canings to be totally unjustifiable. So much so that my mate was due for the Cane in front of the school assembly. He never had it because the master could not find his canes.......we had gone round and collected them all and buried them in the school allotment. He tried to keep the whole school in after school until whoever did it owned up. However everyone refused to stay and except for a few he could not stop us. He was gone by the end of the month to some school in Germany. This was about 1953........
WOW! not bitter or resentful then? You didn't have none of the stuff kids have today because it wasn't around then.Victor Meldrew eat ya heart out!
We didn't even have the stuff that was around then. Think of the poorest scruffiest kid in your school and that is what it was like for everyone in the forties and fifties. Oh and go and wash your mouth out. I am not bitter nor resentful and I am certainly no Victor meldrew. I had a very happy childhood and to be happy we didn't need material things.
You were lucky you had a school to go to. We slept in a hole in the road and 250 of us were educated in a tool shed on the Common.
I was happy as a child because you didn't expect a lot. I had more than my friends because my Mum and Dad made things for us, so I never felt deprived. There was no keeping up with other kids, because the greatest thing you could aspire to was skates with ball-bearings (wowser). I had presents at Christmas and birthday only and was completely nonplussed when an aunt wanted to buy me something. 'But it's not Christmas,' I said. I had one deprivation I needn't have had. I had a radiator in my bedroom that never worked so I had ice on the inside of my bedroom window in winter. After I'd left home, my parents discovered that you can bleed radiators. I froze for my whole childhood because my parents didn't know you had to let air out of radiators.
I was a complete geek, until year 9 then had the growth spurt etc. After that I became very into my sports and girls. Became a bully but only to the people that had tormented me throughout the years. So basically Geek to Jock/Bully.
You sound word for word exactly like my grandad. At least you did the A - levels. The Irish education exams I will be taking in June are believed to be one of the hardest in the world. It's the english who have it easy.
I'm probably a bit older than you sotonsaint, going by some of your descriptions! In my day The Geek wore the tortoiseshell National Health specs The phone addict didn't exist - there weren't any mobiles in those days, but the equivalent would be the one's who spent every spare second of their time at home playing Daley Thomson's decathlon on the ZX Spectrum. The Fat kid - There were no vending machines at school so fatty had to wait for break time to visit the tuck-shop. He preferred marathons to Mars bars (that's snickers to any-one under 30) I was a bit of a geek (I had the black NH glasses, not the tortoiseshell ones), but I got away with is as I was also a member of the Smoking in the bushes gang and was good at sports
Is there an option for "hanging around with morons because I'm not particularly socially gifted and couldn't do any better"? Describes my time at secondary school pretty well, which is probably why I didn't enjoy it much. Very grateful for a fresh start at college. I've always been bright, but got a bit of a problem applying myself. Cross the geek, the attorney and a bit of Jay from the Inbetweeners.
