My deliriously happy primary school days

I remember my first day at South Benfleet County Primary School with rare clarity. My mother left me at the school gate and I hadn’t been in the playground five minutes when a supervising woman trotted up to me, suspended me in the air by my arm, and slapped my leg, hard. Apparently I ought to have stood still at the first blast of her whistle and lined up at the second. But no one had told me the drill. While everyone else stood stock-still, I had remained in motion. Her anger and unhesitating violence surprised, then shocked me. You might argue that I learned everything I needed to know about the world within five minutes of the start of my education. If you’re a publisher reading this, yes I could probably squeeze a book out of it.

I quickly realised, however, that the playground supervisor was unrepresentative. My teacher Mrs Asplin was loving and gentle; my fellow pupils friendly and cheerful. First prize for the weekly spelling test was to go and see the headmistress – a hideous, kind-hearted old thing – and kiss her hairy cheek.

I went to South Benfleet Primary School between 1961 and 1968, always with the same set of classmates. I can confidently name perhaps 40 out of 48 from the class photograph of 1966. We had one black girl (Evangeline McPherson), one fat boy (Raymond Phillips) and one pair of identical twins (Jill and Shen Sabri). Everyone had two parents, except Robert Gray, whose father died. The school was solidly lower middle class and it seems to me that we were deliriously happy. In the class photograph everyone – including Robert Gray and the teacher, Mrs Dobson – is laughing, really laughing.

Of the 48, I was best friends with Steven Heath and Simon Watson, known as Dot or Dotty.