It's
September 1972, summer has already given way to autumn and within
weeks I will be nine-years-old. The academic year once more resumes and
along with it I am delivered a new school; The Junction Road Juniors School. My
former school, Crescent Road Infants School was just on the other side of the
road from our home at 51 Crescent Road, this new school is a short ten-minute
walk away at the top of the next road intersection, Junction Road. Along with
other eight-year-olds, I begin my school year in the second year and completely
skip the first class. My English has clearly been deemed sufficient enough to join
the children of my own age and it feels good. Now, I no longer stand out
as a giant surrounded by class mates clearly a whole year younger than me (see
post Peas And Poverty).
Papa is no longer working on the pig farm, rather now he has found a new job as a Nursing Assistant at a nearby Psychiatric and Geriatric Hospital known as Warley Hospital. I don't really understand what the words Psychiatric and Geriatric mean so ask Papa to explain and he tells me that it basically means a hospital for the old and the mad in reverse order and sometimes even both together. Mama meanwhile has also found work in a local factory called Thermos, and her job is on the production line assembling thermos flasks. Day in day out, Mama puts flask together, and day in day out, Papa looks after the old, the mad and maybe even both together. And while they both do that I go to my new school, the third one of my life in this strange new country, and Sis is found a place in day-care near to the Thermos factory.
Today is the first day of the school year and Mama is not working at the Thermos factory so she can walk me to the school gates. We get up early and I dress with a new outfit that Mama and I carefully picked out from the shops just last week. The first day of a new school always merits new clothes, Mama tell me and today will be no exception. At home Mama takes meticulous care brushing my long black hair until it shines like ebony and she then ties it into two tidy pony tails. I proudly don my new outfit along with coat, and then alongside Mama and Sis who is sitting dutifully in her push chair, we set off for the short walk to school. But when we arrive at the school gate I notice that the other girls are wearing tidy dresses or skirts, topped off with demure coloured jumpers or cardigans and I am most certainly not.
I have turned up at school in the skimpiest micro-shorts of the seventies, otherwise known as hot pants. Now, as far as I am concerned, hot pants are the coolest item of clothing in the England of the 1970's that I land in, and everyone is wearing hot pants; the celebrities, the pop stars, the young girls who want to dress like celebrities and pop stars, and then there are soon-to-be nine-year-old girls like me. However, stood in front of the school gate with Mama, I realise to my horror that school is most certainly not the place for hot pants. What were Mama and I thinking of? How can we have got it so wrong? No-one told us that in England you have to go to school in sensible clothes!
The school bell has already rung, and now it's too late to go back home and change, so there is nothing for me to do but spend the rest of the school day clad in hot pants. The item of clothing which only five minutes earlier exuded within me a feel of luxury and glamour at the school gate, is now a source of deep shame. To mitigate this enormous lack of judgement, I resort to drastic measures and stubbornly refuse to part with my coat in the cloakroom as all the other children tidily place theirs on hooks complete with names. My latest attempt at discreetly fitting into a new school and class has spectacularly backfired, and all because of those dratted hot pants! Now all my class mates want to know why I am wearing a coat indoors, and I tell them that I am feeling rather chilly. I dare not say it is because underneath I am dressed up for a visit to a disco, or the Top Of The Pops TV show and not for an English school day.
My new teacher is called Mrs Bagley and I like her straight away. I think that she likes me back because she welcomes me into the class with beaming smile, even with hot pants underneath my coat, and tells the other children that I am the new girl and that my name is Marie Garrido. Mrs Bagley behaves as if it's the most natural thing in the world to have a girl in the class with her coat on all day, and I am very grateful to her for this. I love my new English first name, its just a shame that Papa made sure that my Spanish surname was not discarded along the way with Maria del Carmen which long ago made way for Marie (see post Girl With Television). Mrs Bagley assigns me a seat next to a nice English girl called Sylvia, and there I spend the rest of my school day, stifling hot with a coat hiding hot pants, but with my dignity intact. After this first school day is over I learn a valuable lesson about how to dress for school in England. Never in hot pants.
After school is over, if Mama is still working at the Thermos factory,
Papa obtains permission from his supervisor at Warley Hospital to take an
extended tea break so he can meet me at the school gate and then walk me home. I
love Mama and Papa, but I feel rather uncomfortable that they speak to me in
front of the other children in Spanish and I would much rather walk home alone.
That way no-one would hear me speaking Spanish and with a bit of luck
no-one would notice that I am not English. But I would never tell Mama and Papa this, I think it
would make them feel extremely sad, so I smile warmly when I meet them at the
school gate and say nothing. Sometimes Papa is in no huge rush to return to
work, so when we return home he looks in on the rabbit family at the end of the
garden housed in the wooden hutch that Papa has especially built for them. The
only problem is that they are no longer the adorable bunnies from when they
were born. Rather now they have grown into enormous specimens and I can see
with Papa that they are beginning to outgrow the hutch.
Our elderly next-door neighbour, Mrs McCabe sometimes happens to be in her own back garden when we are in ours. The fence dividing the two garden is very low so you can always see what your neighbour is up to and she sometimes sees Papa fussing over his adorable rabbit family. Mrs McCabe thinks its outright charming that Papa should harbour such a love for pets and animals in general. She tells Papa that it's a very English quality and she can see that Papa is already fitting in well into English society. Very commendable indeed. Papa does not respond to Mrs McCabe's overtures in any way, he is too busy concentrating on the immediate task at hand, the care of his ever-expanding rabbit family. They are growning so fast that soon they will not be able to fit into the hutch that he not so long ago lovingly built for them. What will Papa do with them? I think to myself. It will not take long for Mrs McCabe and myself to find out.
To be continued...
Next post: Sunday, June 7th : Home Alone
Note: All written content is the intellectual property of this Author. Image material is drawn largely from Pixabay with some additions from private family archives.
