Here and there: my favourite teacher

This is a photograph from when I was in Infant School. I was in the same class, with the same teacher, for three years. I think this may have been a taken before we left to go to Junior School, aged about 7. The lady on the left is my teacher, Miss Roberts, on the right the Headmistress, Miss Hobson. I am the very tall girl at the back.

I loved Miss Roberts. She was quite strict, but fair. This was back in the days when teachers would smack a child if they were naughty and I narrowly escaped one time. Miss Roberts had to leave the class room for a few minutes and me and my friend Mark, for some reason decided to get up and stand on the table. On Miss Roberts' return, the other children told her. She asked us if it was true. I always told the truth (until I was a teenager, anyway!) so I said yes, I was standing on the table. When she asked Mark, he denied it, and received a smack. Can you imagine a teacher being able to smack a child these days?  It was a whole different culture back then.

Miss Roberts was, I guess, in her mid thirties then, so younger than I am now, which seems unbelievable to me now. I remember I used to finish my sums early, and she would get me to mark the other children's work. I also remember being called out to stand beside her desk and read to her. The reading scheme was called Tip and Mitten, and was about a cat and a dog. I will always be grateful to Miss Roberts for teaching me to read, and instilling in me such a love of stories. As soon as I could read, I was away! I permanently had my head in a book for my entire childhood, and pretty often even now.

I still either know or hear news of, several of the other children in the photograph. In fact last week I bumped into one of the boys in the supermarket car park, and I have had met up with two of the girls in the past month. Strange to think we have known each other almost forty years. Miss Roberts and I still exchange Christmas cards, and I would love to see her again.