My autobiography - School

I started school at the age of five. There was no pre-school or nursery school back then; you were just suddenly wrenched away from home and left alone in a room full of strangers. Mum promised she would be back later to pick me up - ‘When the big hand’s on the 12 and the little hand’s on the 3.’ For six hours a day, I sat watching the clock through a veil of tears, doing my best to ignore the unsympathetic, grey-haired woman who sternly insisted that I ‘go play in the sand pit’. The big yellow digger was the main attraction. Viciously fought over by several other children,  I couldn’t lay my hands on it even if I wanted to. Tears and tantrums all day long. Class One - only Five more to endure. If I had any sense of temporal perspective I could have comforted myself with this knowledge, but at that age things seem like forever. For the first six months I was too traumatized to learn anything.