Is this a tall tale or a distant memory, you decide! That reference on Orwell over on another thread brought back memories of my school years where I (think) I first read 'Animal Farm', just cant remember if it was as a class assignment or just on the shelf the the extensive library. The library / English teacher we called 'Froggy' for his spectacles, I dont remember his proper name which I should because I practically lived in the library reading fiction much of the time, that when I was not getting into trouble of course! A fellow whos name was Ivan Bacon (I have not thought of him or his name in over 60 years!) and I chummed around and got into all kinds of shit, we even removed part of the lock on the supply closet in the home room so that when Mr Tinnion snuck in for a quick puff and closed the door behind him he could not get out and someone had to call the janitor. Who me? No I would not do that sort of thing and go on the become an electrical / mechanical technician! In music class which was just about as far as you could go away from the general classrooms, even past the metal and woodworking wing, and I was the music teachers favorite student. He like me so much that he always found a message for me to take to the office at the FAR end of the school when there was much singing to be done, I was such a good singer that when I dawdled there and back I never got hell for taking so long on the trip! The school was Saffron Walden Technical and Modern that had just recently opened when I started there around 58 and the latest and greatest at the time. We were bused in from all around and I met the bus about a mile up the road in Clavering (in front of the pub, wonder where my love of booze came from?)and traveled through Wicken and Newport to get to school. One night in a snow storm coming home the bus got stuck at the top of Wicken hill and a bunch of us elected to walk home, it would never be allowed nowadays of course but at that time it appeared to be quite a walk in a storm. And that my friends what surfaced in my old brain box last night, anyone else out there got anything from that area of Jolly Old or got distant memories from their schooldays returning?
Nope, no mischief here. I went to a private school taught by nuns who kept a tight rein on us. We wore uniforms and most walked to school but a few were bussed. I lived about a mile from school and walked home for lunch and back. I spent most of my childhood scouring the nearby woods; finding all the wild black raspberry thickets etc. (kinda like now) In winter we had some pretty steep hills for sledding and one year a kid built a tobaggen run which was true to form. I made a mistake not being careful going down 'camels back', a sledding hill, on a saucer and when I hit the hump, I came down so hard it knocked everything out of me. I could not breathe or move for several minutes, it seemed. We skated on Turtle's Pond but after I left the area, someone filled it in for housing.
OH, I am so glad that there were some little angels to make up for the school boys I knew Mary, but glad you enjoyed the woods as I now love living in and sharing one as I enter my fading years.....