Val Jameson

I started at Eastcote Lane Infants School when I was just turned 6 years of age.
At first I was in the Huts which were situated oposite the Senior School running parralell to Eastcote lane.
The Teacher name was either MIss Price or Miss Page, we used to have a rest period where we had to lie down on the floor under our desks.
My years in the Infants was very limited as my father was ill and I was eventually sent to live with Relatives in Snaresbrook for about six months, returning home in April 1943 after my Father had passed away.
During the War in the Primary School I remember being shephereded dowwn to the Celler and later to the shelters that were in the fields of the Secondary School, they were like tunnels in the ground with very limited lighting and damp underfoot.
They had benches either side of the tunnels, I never knew how many shelters there were in total.
When things were getting too dangerous we were sent home when the sirens sounded.
I can remember one time when we were sent home we were supposed to stay indoors, but I went along the road in Carlyon Avenue to my friend Mavis Ramsey and we were sitting on the wall in front of her house with her elder Brother David.
The School attendance Officer came along, Mavis and I jumped down but her Brother fell backwards off the wall and ended up in their front garden.
Another incident I remember just after the war was in the Senior School when the Teachers returned after the evacuation and we had a Teacher I can't remember her name, who used to teach Boys but decided she would teach Girls instead.
We were having a silent reading lesson and my friend Mavis and I had a session of silent giggles.
Miss whatever her name was, noticed our books shaking, she call me out to her desk and asked what I was doing, because I did not give her the right answer, she hit me with a ruler across the back of my legs.
My friend was not so lucky she was hit in the mouth knocking out a tooth, what made it worse she had a bad tooth but it was on the other side.
I cannot remember what happpened to that Teacher.
My last memory is of an incident that happened was in my last year in the Senior School being in the Hall with the partitioned closed tnat was seperating the Boys section from the Girls, and sitting on benches against the partition.
Miss Bannister left us while she popped out when we heard the banging coming from the Boys side.
So us Girls decided to bang on the partition with our feet, when Miss Bannister came back she got all of us Girls to go round to the Boys side and apologize to them and their Master, and the Master was Mr Coles and lots of us Girls thought he was quite dishy!!!!.
A couple of years later I left School I was working for a Canadian Insurance Company in the West End of London and who should come in to pay his premium but dishy Mr Coles.© val.jameson2008

See Val's picture of the 1947 approx; Senior School Choir in the Extra Pictures section including most of the Girls names.