My granddaughter will begin her first year at secondary school on Tuesday. With all the precautions that she and her teachers will be taking because of the pandemic, I’m sure it will be the strangest of experiences for her, if not worrying and perhaps traumatic. But I’m also sure that she will take it all in her stride.
My first day at secondary school back in 1962 was also worrying and traumatic, but for different reasons. I and the other laddies from the Ferry who were destined to begin at St Mary’s Academy in Bathgate that year had heard tales of the horrors that befell first year pupils on their first day. It was a tradition, we were told. So on that rainy September morning we all sat quietly with white nervous faces during the two bus journeys that would take us to our fate.
When the second bus arrived at the school, the Ferry kids, along with several hundred other pupils from elsewhere, were herded into the gym hall, where a local priest said Mass, which was also a tradition on the first day of a new school term. The problem with observing Mass in a hall is that you have to do a lot of genuflecting – taking the knee, they call it nowadays. And the bigger problem with genuflecting in a packed hall where everyone is wearing wet coats and carrying schoolbags is that there’s a lot of bumping and jostling. On one occasion when I was taking the knee, an older pupil was so close to me I could smell his rancid breath. And then he whispered in my ear and my body froze: “Wait till playtime. We’ll be comin’ tae get ye.”
I spent the next part of the morning in a daze. We were allocated to our classes, introduced to our form teachers, given timetables – all that sort of thing. But soon enough the school bell rang to signify the morning break; it sounded like a death knell to me.
With much trepidation, the first year pupils filed out of the school and into the playground. I hung back as long as I could, but eventually I had to step out. What greeted me was like a scene from Dante’s Inferno. Some bands of older boys had formed circles so that they could toss the first years they captured screaming into the air. Other bands were dragging their captives into the shunkies (the outside toilets) where their heads would be shoved down the lavvy pan and the chain pulled. Still others were in hot pursuit of their weeping prey. And those first years who had been “initiated” were limping and whimpering back towards the school.
The common factor among all the victims was their school uniform – the bright blue blazer with gold braiding that their parents, including mine, had gladly and proudly spent half a week’s wages on and that now turned their sons into shiny new targets for the mob. I, too, was such a target. Desperately looking around for some way to escape, I spotted three big boys from my class – by big, I mean six feet-plus big – standing in a nervous huddle. Instinctively, I knew that their bigness was keeping them safe. I didn’t know the boys from Adam, but suddenly I became their BFF. Being the size of tuppence, it was easy for me to slip into the huddle and be screened from the cowardly bullies. I was safe as well.
They say that Fifers are fly. Well, this wee Ferry laddie was just as fly that morning.
My first day at secondary school back in 1962 was also worrying and traumatic, but for different reasons. I and the other laddies from the Ferry who were destined to begin at St Mary’s Academy in Bathgate that year had heard tales of the horrors that befell first year pupils on their first day. It was a tradition, we were told. So on that rainy September morning we all sat quietly with white nervous faces during the two bus journeys that would take us to our fate.
When the second bus arrived at the school, the Ferry kids, along with several hundred other pupils from elsewhere, were herded into the gym hall, where a local priest said Mass, which was also a tradition on the first day of a new school term. The problem with observing Mass in a hall is that you have to do a lot of genuflecting – taking the knee, they call it nowadays. And the bigger problem with genuflecting in a packed hall where everyone is wearing wet coats and carrying schoolbags is that there’s a lot of bumping and jostling. On one occasion when I was taking the knee, an older pupil was so close to me I could smell his rancid breath. And then he whispered in my ear and my body froze: “Wait till playtime. We’ll be comin’ tae get ye.”
I spent the next part of the morning in a daze. We were allocated to our classes, introduced to our form teachers, given timetables – all that sort of thing. But soon enough the school bell rang to signify the morning break; it sounded like a death knell to me.
With much trepidation, the first year pupils filed out of the school and into the playground. I hung back as long as I could, but eventually I had to step out. What greeted me was like a scene from Dante’s Inferno. Some bands of older boys had formed circles so that they could toss the first years they captured screaming into the air. Other bands were dragging their captives into the shunkies (the outside toilets) where their heads would be shoved down the lavvy pan and the chain pulled. Still others were in hot pursuit of their weeping prey. And those first years who had been “initiated” were limping and whimpering back towards the school.
The common factor among all the victims was their school uniform – the bright blue blazer with gold braiding that their parents, including mine, had gladly and proudly spent half a week’s wages on and that now turned their sons into shiny new targets for the mob. I, too, was such a target. Desperately looking around for some way to escape, I spotted three big boys from my class – by big, I mean six feet-plus big – standing in a nervous huddle. Instinctively, I knew that their bigness was keeping them safe. I didn’t know the boys from Adam, but suddenly I became their BFF. Being the size of tuppence, it was easy for me to slip into the huddle and be screened from the cowardly bullies. I was safe as well.
They say that Fifers are fly. Well, this wee Ferry laddie was just as fly that morning.