family history

"Until I was seven I went to a dame school run by a lady whose brother owned a famous race horse. It was very sweet but I didn't learn a thing, not a single thing, so then I went to a local school twelve miles away on the bus. I caught measles, mumps, scarlatina and everything going so when I was nine my father decided it would be safer if I went to boarding school. It was such a huge building that the vicarage looked very small when I went home but we didn't have half term holidays in those days so I got used to it. I slept in a dormitory with ten other girls and each of us had our own cubicle surrounded with curtains until a new headmistress arrived who had been in the Wrens. She took one look at the curtains, said that they were absolute nonsense and insisted that they were all removed so, my dear, after that we had to change in front of the other girls. We had a white shirt and tunic with three pleats, a navy afternoon dress with detachable white collar and of course a straw boater to wear with our navy suit on Sundays. When I went away I had twenty four handkerchiefs, each one with a Cash's name tape sewn on, my mother had to use her own clothing tokens. She wasn't very happy because I only had one left when I came home at the end of term. It was a plain and simple life, we ran around the hockey pitch before breakfast and then we had porridge. You were given deportment marks every week and they were particularly strict about table manners. You had to talk to the girl on your right and then the girl on your left at the next course and you couldn't ask for anything to be passed to you, you just had to hope someone would notice that you didn't have any water or what have you. I think after being at school I feel that I can cope with anything and all my friends say the same thing. Of course, people tell you that schooldays are the best days of your life but I can remember thinking, I hope not...surely anything is better than this!"

Granny's memories of a post war childhood in rural Lincolnshire.