More misty water coloured memories. The intention is that this is just a quickie because a) I remember bugger all about my first school, and b) I'm starving and about to head out for lunch.
My first school was Morden Primary School and I was there between 1974 and 79. The few things I remember. The school was at the end of our street and you could see it from the front garden, maybe 200m away. There was a metal climbing frame mounted in concrete and huge concrete tube for us kids to play on. There was a good sized grass area where we'd play football - teams were loads-a-side. I vaguely remember the celebrations of the Queen's silver Jubilee in the school grounds. Dad painted my scooter silver and mum put a big cardboard construction on the front that was covered in royal memorabilia. There were a couple of crab-apple trees that would be covered in blossom and then fruit; we'd collect the fruit and my parents would make jam. At the other end of our street was a small field that was overrun with blackberry bushes, and along the railway line there were more. We'd collect them and make blackberry jam. In the field there were occasionally a couple of horses, and we'd sometimes collect poo for the garden. Odd. Very odd. We weren't living in the countryside; we were living in the 70s.
Back at school there were morning assemblies where we sat cross-legged in the main hall around which the classrooms were arranged. The hall doubled as the gym and trebled as the dining hall. Dinner was served by the dinner ladies and as I recall was proper English grub. Meat, overcooked veg and spuds, sponge cake and custard. Jamie Oliver would have had nothing to to do at Mordern Primary in the mid-70s. In the morning we'd have a bottle of milk; proper glass bottle, foil top. I wasn't a fan of milk. I'm still not.
There were about 120 kids across all years. I think. Could have been fewer. It was a single story building apart from the head's office, which was up stairs and was were I was sent after biting Ian. For inflicting the bite I had to sit alone at lunch for a week and I got the slipper. No idea why I bit him, he was one of my mates. We were the fastest runners and would race around the playground. One day we started calling each other "Merlin" (no idea why) which was bastardised to "Melvin" and stuck to me. Today, outside of work, I am called Melv more than I am called Kevin.
I would go to my mate's houses after school. Steve and David's mums would look after us and I remember that I would have a cup of tea at Steve's house. Other than that I didn't drink tea. Steve had a coal bunker in his back garden but they had "proper" heating in their house and it wasn't filled with coal, as ours was. It was a sort of play house - if you can call a concrete bunker a playhouse. If I went to Steve or Dave's house, or if they came to mine, our parents would phone the other's parents when we were about to leave to walk home. Three rings and hang up, another three rings and hang up - that meant we were on our way. As far as I recall none of us ever got abducted, beaten up, lost or abused on those walks home. Probably wouldn't today.
I'd sometimes go to Barry or Lee's houses and I never remember seeing either of their parents. These guys lived on Hatfield Mead estate, a pretty rough place at the time, and I think they pretty much brought themselves up. Rumour was that a woman called "mad-ax lil" lived there and had once thrown a baby from a balcony. Fairly sure that was just rumour. It was council housing (I think.) A quick web search for "hatfield mead morden" and I found a real estate ad for a 2 bed maisonette on the estate for 195k. Times have changed. Years later I bumped into Barry just once; he had the look of your typical London scrote. Dad would see him fairly regularly in the betting shop. No idea what became of him. Another friend was David. He was the vicar's adopted son and was a Vietnamese boat kid. There must have been non-white kids I'd played with when we lived in Lambeth but I don't remember them, so David was officially my first non-English friend. His mum would make caramel slice and the vicarage seemed like a huge house. I enjoyed going over to play with him.
I would go to Sunday school at St Lawrence's which was were David's dad was resident vic and it was just over the road from the school, so maybe 300yds from my front door. I was in the choir too. I looked all angelic, mimed my way through and when I was a little older would earn 50p for every wedding I 'sang' at. The bigger choristers would ring the bells, pulling on the long ropes that hung from the ceiling in the bell tower. We'd occasionally ring them - very cool for a little kid. My folks were not openly religious and I'm not sure they were closedly religious. Later in life I recall dad talking about the death in childbirth of my sister Sheila, who would have been two years younger than me. She died on Good Friday and he said "don't see what's so fucking good about it." Fair call. But I guess the adopted Vietnamese son of the local vicar was a good choice of mate for a kid in the 70s, so you could put up with the religion, such that it was. It clearly didn't rub off on me.
I didn't stay in contact with any of my primary school mates.
You know how I said I was hungry....
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