Our chats with this lady were so vibrant and colourful. She is quite the storyteller! She told us stories about growing up in the 1940s, including about school life.
"We always walked to and from school, it wasn’t far. Walked there, walked home for dinner. Walked back again after dinner, and unless there was going to be a fight under the tree, in which case you’d go to watch that, you walked home again at the end of the day too. Nice big shady tree that was.
School wasn’t usually my favourite spot but I’d go because I had to.
Well you’ve got to get up to mischief. There’s no fun if you don’t, is there? Trotty used to say ‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING’. ‘Nothing sir’. ‘WELL PUT YOUR HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE ‘EM.’ We’d probably have been playing noughts and crosses or something. And that was the cane for us, wasn’t it.
If you only got the cane a couple of times that day you’d had a good day. We had teachers who liked giving out the cane. Two sums wrong, you got the cane. Two spellings wrong and you got the cane. You’d go home and you’d say, "mum Trotty give us the cane" and she’d just say "well you must have deserved it." That was the only sympathy you got."