One of the most endearing traits of Western society is what we do in our spare time. The variety is enormous ( I’ll write more about this in future) – some are individual and some seem to be embedded in the national psyche like Germans driving cars at 150 mph , the French driving them while three sheets to the wind and Italians doing so in a manner that makes stock car racing look like a safe activity for your nice new Ford Mondeo.
Most people have more than one hobby and some of these can be a passion. I think there are three types – something that takes a grip and dies off again in a relatively short space of time, a casual thing that can be put aside and returned to at a later date and something that is deep seated and endures over years or even decades.
I’m no different to anyone else and have had all three – got very keen on running for a while which soon died off and I like things like jigsaw puzzles and cryptic crosswords but can go long periods without doing either. The third category is the one I want to talk about here – along with watching live sport, reading is the enduring passion of my life. It has been with me as long as I can remember.
It has provided knowledge, intellectual stimulation and pure pleasure. It has shortened long plane flights, provided company on overseas work assignments, enhanced holidays, made commuting tolerable and I’m known for constantly carrying a book around.
Although these pieces are meant to be about learning to read – it does cover that – as I read though what I’ve written here it’s as much about my early years at school so I hope there’s some entertainment value in that.
To use the opening phrase from the Tom Petty song from which the subtitle of this piece is taken. So it started out…
I need to acknowledge a deep gratitude to my parents here – even before I started school there were visits to the children’s section of the local library and there were books around – Ladybird stuff, Ant and Bee and the like. I could read before I started school although it was pretty basic and I had to skip over longer more difficult words. Think Diane Abbott or Kamala Harris level of comprehension here.
Arriving on my first day at the local infants school just after Easter in 1970 I was keen to see what the wider world had to offer – a bit naïve considering some of the bastards who were colleagues in my first class there. I’m not saying these individuals lived on caravan sites but suffice to say they’d have fitted in well in such an environment.
I was extremely fortunate to have my first classroom experience under the expert guidance of Mrs C. I thought she was pretty ancient at the time but on mature reflection she was late 20s or early 30s at best. A disciplinarian when needed but largely a calm, benign presence whose ability to manage a mob of 5 and 6 year olds was far better than I’d ever manage even with 55 years of hindsight.
Reading tuition back then started by sitting in a ring around the teacher while she held up some flash cards that we tried to read while the slightly older kids bullied each other in the far reaches of the classroom. It seemed to be acceptable as long as the howls of pain didn’t reach a volume that disrupted the session or even worse prompt the residents of nearby houses to call the emergency services.
I stumbled over a few in that first session but by the second was down pat ( my memory is really good) so advanced to the next group at which point I could read almost anything and lost interest in it.
Achievement in these group sessions allowed me to advance into the library corner of the classroom and sort out material for myself.
Back then starter books were Janet and John – I think a series of 5 small books interspersed with a larger one but all consisting of basic sentences of one syllable words. For example:
Look at the dog
See Spot run
21st century examples might be:
See Ange in the bike shed
Look at Blair in the dock at the Hague
All one syllable words and easy to understand unless you’re studying Critical Race Theory at the LSE or SOAS
Back to the subject at hand. Fair to say after being given the green light I charged into the library area like Jimmy Savile into Leeds Royal Infirmary Morgue with the keys to all the rooms. Did about a dozen books in the first session. Mrs C just let me go but I’m sure keeping a quiet watch out of the corner of her eye.
Eventually I was told to stop and re-enter general circulation in the classroom. This was fraught with danger – what to do?
There were a few tables for general use largely occupied by other kids using blocks to convince themselves 2+2 really is 4 or trying to write the letter ‘a’ without it looking like something conjured up by Mr Squiggle on a bad acid trip
Perhaps the more recreational areas presented a better option…
The first of these was the wendy house – a flimsy wooden construction parked next to the teachers desk. Walls high enough for even the biggest kid to be unable to peer over but low enough for an inquisitive teacher to assess what was happening when the sounds from inside became alarming enough to suspect a 5 year old version of Dr Mengele was conducting an unauthorised medical experiment on some hapless victim.
The more down to earth problem on entering this closeted arena was to find it already occupied by own of the more alpha girls in the class. A gentle lad like myself might quickly find themselves laying the table or doing the dishes while the young lady in question sat on one of the chairs and had a couple of John Player No6’s and a large gin and tonic while reading the Radio Times.
A foretaste of things to come.
The alternative was the table with a small sandpit in the middle. This was located in the corner of the classroom behind the wendy house and therefore conveniently out of the direct eyeline of Mrs C. Why building sandcastles on the state tick is a good use of the education budget escapes me to this day but there were more difficult things for our intrepid young scholar to deal with here.
Becoming preoccupied with moving small bits of sand around a plastic bucket with a Matchbox sized digger meant you dropped your guard against the approach of one of the bigger more vindictive boys. This lack of awareness could result in being force fed an early silicon based lunch with little or no nutritional value and likely to do some damage to your digestive system unless swiftly regurgitated.
All this mix of fun, fear and learning usually drew to a close with the sounds of the lunch tables being set up in the assembly hall.
School lunches in the early 70s were a trial of endurance for kids like myself accustomed to Mum’s solid home cooking. Costing a grand total of 60p per week in 1970 ( later rising to the brutal amount of 75p ) you basically got what you paid for.
The dining area doubled as the assembly hall and gymnasium. Most of the gym equipment (mats, balance beams and the like) was stored in an alcove off the side of the hall but some items were a permanent feature of the hall albeit folded away. This included a set of six or so ropes to the ceiling that could be rolled out across the hall during PE lessons. Allowing 5 year old kids to shimmy up a 15 foot rope to the ceiling would give any effete school inspector an immediate bowel evacuation these days but we didn’t think twice about it. Dress for the PE lessons was interesting too – for us boys we discarded shoes, socks, jumper and shirt and performed in our vest and shorts ( the latter being almost always made of some unidentifiable synthetic charcoal material that would have instantly incinerated the wearer who approached a naked flame). The poor girls however had to discard any dresses and skirts and joined the action in vests and the ubiquitous navy blue big knickers that would give even the most depraved minicab driver or BBC presenter pause for thought.
Back to lunch. We all entered the hall – maybe a hundred or so – and waited for our turn to be served. We were seated at tables of six and once our table was called we marched up to the serving area grabbed our plate and prepared ourselves to run the gauntlet of the serving staff. These stone faced martinets were dressed in uniforms of pale blue and white so they looked a bit like Nurse Ratched off One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The women ( and they were always women) administered slop on to the plate without fear or favour. Woebetide any young lad or lass who tried to decline one of the gourmet items on offer. It was met with a grin that would make the clown off “It” look child friendly and an extra large portion.
Once you’d collected the meal it was back into the dining hall and into the jurisdiction of another group of women. Formally known as dinner ladies we knew them as pink ladies due to the knee length coats they wore. Patrolling the room like sharks in dirty water they had all the demeanour of someone who’d recently been released from a lengthy prison sentence for services to the SS in the 1940s. Their main task seemed to be to coerce reluctant young kids to eat what ever crap had been slopped on to their plates no matter how inedible. I clearly recall being the last one in the dinner hall (aged 5) in tears while one of these wannabe prison warders tried to make me consume something described as ghoulash that appeared to have been made from industrial waste.
I’d like to be more generous to a well meaning bunch of women but these bastards made my life hell for three years
What was the food like? In the main disgusting. We didn’t eat fancy at home but my Mum was (and still is ) a good cook and I never approached a family meal with any sense of trepidation. School completely different. Most of the mains were some kind of pie or stew designed to disguise the lack of meat content and pretty indigestible in my view. They were usually accompanied by a couple of vegetables boiled to within an inch of their lives and the piece de resistance a hemisphere of mashed potato made of sawdust and polystyrene.
Puddings were a bit better – tapioca, rice or semolina were the staples- although the regular dose of prunes and custard seemed counterproductive to me. Filling up one hundred 5-8 year olds with a known laxative ahead of a two hour afternoon classroom session is just inviting trouble.
Once the purgatory of lunch was over we were released into the playground to play football, wrestle with each other and try and peer up girls skirts ( a pointless activity since we’d seen them in their big blue knickers in PE a couple of hours earlier). The girls were more cunning than us – once they’d realised there was a concept of “girls germs” they’d sneak up behind us and do a quick tap on the shoulder to pass them on. 10 years later I’d have been grateful for such an approach.
And so to the afternoon session – often involved some singing. Anyone who heard the 5 year old me belting out Lord of the Dance in a reedy contralto has probably had sleepless nights ever since. I was so bad I was actually asked to mime in a couple of school productions.
This afternoon session always involved Mrs C reading the class a story. This was outside the regular school reading list and opened my eyes further. Maybe the last 45 minutes of the day was fairly free time and I often used it to dig out the book we’d been read to look at it properly or dig out something else of a similar ilk.
So this is me learning to read at 5. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
More to come.
© ArthurDaley 2026
