Primary Schools

I remember only the detritus of schools which taught fear, where only nuns seemed to believe in the power of the written word and punishment. There was a boy in the middle of it all who once forged his father’s signature in order to dodge a maths test and spent the whole day in a World War II cemetery sleeping between roses and epitaphs. The intimidation of books from Glasgow made him steal small notes and coins from his father which admitted him to a mystic circle of titbits, cannabis, and adult tales far away from pink rooms and uniform handwriting or ‘eena meena maina mo’ by rote after clambering walls that grow glass-creepers to the freedom of cork trees and frogs and egrets, a stinking marshy world of catapults and running noses which grappled with black polished shoes and moral science, to return home on cloudy evenings brewing storm-fuelled nights exiled on a reed mat and only a hurricane lamp with slate, chalk, and as the years grew up inkwell and bamboo-pulp paper were the keepsakes of his childhood. There were mosquito storms and cool dirt floors polished with cowdung and clay, ruined walls and lizard myrtles and moss which reminded elders of neglect near a big water tank left behind by British soldiers where vipers came to drink, and gaudy walls of goddesses. I can see the naïve boy who couldn’t read the dirty word spelt on the ground by his older friends in the calligraphy of randy boyhood, and, later, obsessed with that moist idea explored his girl cousins fervently. There were long delightful, convalescent afternoons of illustrated classics without the stress of the school bus when he heard only the sleepy clang of hammers in the nearby smithy, when life burnt slowly like calories even when he was sleeping, without the solemnity of anyone’s life coming to an end.