The Beginning...

Just off the coast of England, you will see a horrid sight.

A little pile of mud and sand they call the Isle of Wight, or so the song goes.

I was born there in 1955. Born at home as most babies were.

Things back then were so different from today.

No mobile phones, no internet, no supermarkets, and most people didn't have a car.

Black and white TV, and only two channels BBC or ITV, and both closed down every night.

No central heating and back then we had really cold winters.

1959 was the coldest, I remember my dad trying to light a bonfire in the garden and it was so cold the flame on the match froze!

As I said not many people had fridges or freezers, so we used to put orange juice outside at night with a spoon in it to make ice lollies.

1963 was the year of the big snow. It started snowing on Boxing Day and snowed every day until March, and if you don't believe me Google it.

As the roads were blocked we had to walk to school in our short trousers and duffle coats, with our woolly mittens that turned into blocks of ice after making one snowball.

Back then all the kids at school got a small bottle of milk every day,( except the creepy ones who got their mum to write to the school and say they were allergic to milk, they got orange juice)

Anyhow, by that time I was a milk monitor, which was a posh name for having to get to school early, get the crates of frozen milk from the back of the tractor that delivered them, then take a crate to each classroom. Because the milk was frozen it had burst out of the top and as it thawed, puddles of milk trickled over the classroom floors.

Finally, the snow melted and a new horror awaited us.

Swimming lessons.

The school had managed to get enough money to build a swimming pool. Outdoor unheated. The changing rooms were tin sheds, and I remember walking towards it, the frost still on the grass, and getting changed to meet our doom.

We lined up awaiting our fate, the teacher standing there, wrapped in thermals and a fur coat, puffing her cigarette, ( teachers smoked in class back then) then 'Into the pool'.

First, it was the footbath, then under an ice-cold shower, then in you went.

Cold! It is amazing that any of us boys ever went on to have children, let me tell you that the temperature of water does bad things to the lower body parts of a young male.

Then, those of us who were not suffering from hypothermia went back to class, to be covered with fag ash and smoke until home time.

NB. Many years later the pool was closed, health and safety, and parents were asked to help demolish the buildings and fill it it. I was one of the many there and enjoyed every second of it. Needless to say it put me off swimming forever, and to this day I can't swim.

At school, if you were naughty, girls and boys, you were sent to see Mr Smart, an ex-RAF spitfire pilot who lost a leg in the battle of Britain. Then in front of the class, you had to bend over and get a smack on the ass. Once was enough, and you quickly behaved after that, and you NEVER went home and told mum and dad, because you would get another one.

The sweet shop by the school sold sugar cigarettes, amongst other things, and if you had any pocket money, we went to the small amusement arcade at the end of Totland Pier, where for a penny you could play a machine, trying to flick balls into little cups. If you managed it the prize was...two fags!

It was hardly surprising that when we left junior school most of us were nicotine addicts

But...they were excellent teachers, and we had total respect for them,( or was it fear) the worst was Ms Arnold, who was nine feet high and had a look that could turn you into stone. She also chain-smoked a brand of cigarettes called Piccadilly, and as my desk was at the front of the class I got the full benefit of the ashtray and smoke.

But when we left at eleven years old we could calculate the volume of a cone, use sines and cosines, and were doing maths that came up in O levels at grammar school.

I met her years later, she was a small lovely old lady, who told me 'I was there to teach, I needed the discipline to do it'. The trouble was she was too good and when we went to grammar school everyone else was so far behind we had to go back to the beginning.

Anyhow. That is the basics, the next posts will be far more interesting, hope you like my tale from the past and if you did spread the word.