First School and World Events

I went to school at a nearby private Prep school called Elm Green in Little Baddow, which I started early at the age of four. Within a very few years I was walking to and from school on my own, a distance of half a mile or so, but a journey involving a main road, footpaths and a dark and rather scary wood. There was a short cut across a field that avoided the wood but the field was occupied by a large red bull. Every day was a choice: was the bull far enough away to chance a sprint across the grass, or would I have to risk meeting goblins in the wood? Far more worrying than child abductors or perverts – they never even featured in our vocabulary. (My father has since reminded me I was not supposed to take that short cut anyway!)




The school was an intimate, family-run business and the Headmistress would invite selected classes into her sitting room to watch momentous world events on her small black and white television. I am sure I saw several but the only one I remember with any clarity was the launching of the QE2. As we did not have radio or TV at home we relied on the papers for news. I remember bouncing on my parents bed when my father came in the room with the Daily Telegraph and said "Kennedy's dead" and they both stood silent, shocked. I carried on bouncing.

Towards the end of my Elm Green years we drove to London for one of our days out, it must have been '67 or '68. We drove through Trafalgar Square but the traffic was heavy and there were crowds of people with placards. We were trapped by the mass of people, and then realised we were between the crowd and a wall of police, some mounted. The crowd were chanting "IRA, IRA". Suddenly someone threw a metal news stand at a police horse making it rear up and nearly crash into our car. Two policemen rushed out and grabbed a man, pushed him onto our bonnet and gave him a good beating (short rubber truncheons then, not riot sticks and body armour). The crowd wanted revenge, my father wanted out. We shot off, and the side of the car took a hammering from scores of angry boots and fists. Scary enough, but how soon the Republicans lost sympathy in London. Within a short time we were entering a decade of bombing and tension, luckily I never came close to the worst of it.