After Miss Robson our next teacher was a small bright,
neatly dressed woman called Miss Russell who lived with her sister and had
always whistled as her childhood party turn. I knew this because my father told
me,
The next one to
sing was wee Jean Russell,
She couldnae
sing, so she started to whustle.
Despite this, like many country people, she was remarkably well
informed. She told us how the school children had given pennies and collected
silver paper to finance the building of HMS Belfast. She told us how Spitfires
were built. She who told us how terrifying and obscene a telegram from the War
Office saying a husband or son had been killed could be. We saw the effects for
ourselves as time passed.
By now, WW2 was three years old and the classroom windows had brown anti-shatter screens stuck on them and smelled of the glue used to stick the screens to the glass.
Officially, she taught us tables, but she also allowed the boy at the front of the class to sleep.
For some fault, or maybe for maintaining my innocence, I was sent to the front of the class beside him. I felt it my duty to try to keep him awake; how could he learn otherwise? He didn’t take kindly to that and I was blamed for the resulting disruption. At the time I was upset by the injustice, but realised later that there was little chance of rest in the hovel the boy lived in and Miss was making allowances. Thankfully, his old place of residence has long since been bulldozed.
A Land fit for heroes has it's origins in those days and those teachers who had lost sweethearts in WW1.
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