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As I think I may have mentioned before, although St. John's didn't have a uniform, our mum made one up. A black Blazer with a st James badge, she couldn't find one for St. John, a black beret, elastic under the chin. i was often clad in kilt, as Ann's (SA) BIL my classmate, remembers. So it was vest, liberty bodice, the wee top thing on the kilt to hold it up, probably a blouse then a hand knitted sweater. Blazer, beret, and burberry, wellies..how the heck did we propel ourselves towards the school? I spent much of my childhood looking like a sack o' tatties!

morag wrote:As I think I may have mentioned before, although St. John's didn't have a uniform, our mum made one up. A black Blazer with a st James badge, she couldn't find one for St. John, a black beret, elastic under the chin. i was often clad in kilt, as Ann's (SA) BIL my classmate, remembers. So it was vest, liberty bodice, the wee top thing on the kilt to hold it up, probably a blouse then a hand knitted sweater. Blazer, beret, and burberry, wellies..how the heck did we propel ourselves towards the school? I spent much of my childhood looking like a sack o' tatties!

Dont forget the scarf, wrapped round your neck, under your arms and tied in a big knot at the back, I looked like Quasi Modo with a humph on my back and the nearer I got to school, the hotter I got - what with all of that stuff piled on and a scooter scarf and pockies - everyone was biling by the time they got to school.

Meg

along with the snow that fell down inside the wellies to melt...
Jeez, when it rains here many parents keep their kids home rather than drive them to school! For us it was a long walk in whatever the weather..who was ever allowed to stay home because of bad weather?

During the early 50s some weekends we'd use the playground at Ardrossan Academy. We'd tear around the place in our bikes. One day Davie Ford and I had a wee accident. Well, it wisnae that wee, I was heading down alongside the bike shed parallel to Parkhouse Road at full speed heading for that sunken area (what was that, a netball area?).

Anyway, little did I, or Davie know that we were about to have a high speed collision - he was coming the other way behind the shed. I remember flying through the air and was dazed for some time, but both of us recovered and we each had to carry our bikes home if I remember rightly.

One of the other times I went to Ardrossan Academy was to learn to ballroom dance at evening classes. Well, that was the excuse.

Hughie, I went to the Academy at night for Ballroom dancing lessons. Maybe we met long before Australia.
Netta

i also used to go to Ballroom Dancing Classes in 1955

If you're talking about the sunken area down by the burn, Hughie, it was referred to in my day as "the old tennis courts ", and presumably that's what it once was, but any such use of the area was long past. Part of it was filled in with landfill to make more room to build the new gym block cum sports centre that was put up on that part of the site at the start of the seventies.

Susan

I remember with such fond memories the "old" primary building.
I went there in 1956 and worked my way round most of the classrooms form Miss Miller in room1 through to Miss McKelvie at the other end.
Miss Gaul was my favourite and Miss Christie my nightmare ! I was terrified of her and prayed that she would leave or that something terrible would happen to her. Just imagine my elation when I discovered that my class was going to "skip" her and we got Miss Gaul instead ! Thank you Lord !!!!!
Also remember playing football every lunchtime down on the old tennis courts - never needed a referee in those days but there were some fights over disputed "goals" !
Hated the outside toilets and never managed to get "it" over the wall despite lots of trying - (work it out !!!!!)
I was really disappointed when I found out the building had been demolished - end of an era.

David,I was exactly the same,I was terrified of Miss Christie and thankfully we escaped her too and got Miss Gaul who incidentally was my favourite too.Although Miss Gaul was off one day and we had Christie and I asked to go to the toilet and went home.My poor mother had to write an note for me saying I was sick,well she made me feel that way.

Miss Christie was still at the school in my earliest primary years, but I had no idea of her notoriety until our teacher was absent and some of us were put into her class for a few days. When I prattled innocently of this to my sister ( who'd been one of the unfortunates who had her as a class teacher ), she reacted with horror and seemed surprised that I was still in one piece !

Yet I'd noticed nothing out of the way; all I remember was being overawed at being in with the big boys and girls three or four classes ahead of us ( they can only have been a year or two older, but the gap seemed huge at that age ).

Maybe she'd mellowed with age ? From the sound of her I doubt it; but I never had to find out, since by the time we'd got to the stage where we might have had her she'd either retired or moved to another school. Miss Gaul had also retired by then, so I never really knew her either.

Susan

Yes, Miss Christie was quite something. I had her in Primary 4 and when you got your work wrong she would make you come back in at lunchtime to do it again. I remember one time doing an addition sum again and again and again - in class, at lunchtime and probably the next day as well. I kept getting the same answer but since this seemed to be wrong, I kept at it until I came up with other ones. In the end it turned out that I had missed out the comma after the thousands column - a real crime. Miss Christie was really involved with Guides though. I wasn't one but I remember during some of those lunchtime detentions the 'big girls' coming in to practise semaphore. Not sure why she was so hard on us all.

It's strange, we all have memories of awful teachers who in 'real life' were maybe quite nice. Seems to me they are mostly female and I wonder if it was the frustration of jobs available to females then? Perhaps they had higher hopes than secretary or teacher, which made them bitter, or just had anger issues. Looking back, there were 3 teachers who
made life miserable, and you tried to avoid them like the plague, one at St. John's, 2 at St. Mike's, they'd no business being teachers.