Growing up in the Fifties - 5
Other Classes
By Margaret Foster
Addiewell Public School: 1950-1956
Other lessons we 'enjoyed' in our years of Primary Education included things like: singing, handiwork, drawing and 'drill.' In other words: music, arts and craft and exercises in the gym hall.
Music was taken by a Mr Wood from Blackburn who came a couple of times a week and tried to teach us scales and how to read music. I enjoyed the singing, but I had a hard time with the other stuff. The old piano was pushed from room to room- another job tackled by the older boys. One or two children had piano lessons outside school and so they were streets ahead of the rest of us. I may be wrong, but I think it was Mrs Wilson from Meadowhead Terrace who held these lessons. She was, for many years, the organist at the church.
The craft lessons included making things like raffia mats using cardboard shapes and coloured raffia. Pom poms were made by placing two cardboard milk bottle tops together and threading wool through the hole that was meant for the straw. You kept going round and round until it was too tight to do any more. When the wool was cut between the bottle tops a loose piece was tied round the middle before the cardboard was removed and hey presto! A perfect pom pom. I remember my brother making a little woven purse in blue and white. My mother had it for years, she kept her single shillings for the metre in it. Who remembers the shilling metre...For the girls knitting and sewing were considered essential. Scarves, pockies (mittens), pull on hats and even socks were knitted in a multitude of colours with many a dropped stitch. Sewing started with simple stitching and progressed to: a knitting bag (to keep our knitting in), a lap bag (for our sewing stuff) and, in our last year, an apron and cap which would be required for cooking classes when we went up to High School. All this was in checked gingham which helped to keep our stitches in straight lines. I don't know what the boys did while the girls toiled at turning a heel or some other complicated endeavour.
Gym days were a joy to me because it was like extra playtime. I can't remember the gym master's name, but Mr Marr comes to mind. The (drill) hall had a beautiful wooden floor and we were required to wear gym shoes. Some children were lucky enough to have their own, but for the others, there was a big box of various sizes from which you had to try and find a pair to fit. Back then no one thought about the hygiene aspect: no one wanted to miss gym. We did not have the ropes and beams and wall bars that we later found in the high school gym but we had: 'the horse' 'the box mats, wooden (hula) hoops and beanbags. Not, I might add, the big kind you sit on but small squares we could throw to each other. We did energetic aerobics but we called them exercises or drill. Sometimes we were taken outside to run around the building. Great fun, what did they think we did at playtime? Well that's another story...