Kathryn Mackie (Class of 1981)

I was at St Albans Road throughout my primary school years with them culminating at George Square. My first year of senior school was at Colinton Road after the amalgamation of the two schools, so all my memories of GWLC were of those early years. They were a mix of great days and not so great days particularly in the maths department!

St Albans Road

Arts and crafts were always a favourite starting, I think, with a small ‘bits’ holder made from the bottom 3 cm of a toilet roll with felt wrapped round it with a handsewn bottom and a lid fastened by a button in which my father kept paper clips in for decades. This was closely followed by a needle holder made of felt possibly made in P1, a knitted poncho for my Sindy doll, a gonk, a knitted rabbit glove puppet, a papier mache head of a nativity king for another glove puppet and a sewn lap holder.

Sports day was always great fun and took place in the field across the road from the school. One year in particular was extremely successful for me but equally frustrating. We were put into groups to run our races and this year in every race I came second to a very fast girl whom I just couldn’t beat. Miss Fleming was giving out the winning badges, red for first and blue for second [I had 6 in total] and was laughing as the two of us kept reappearing to shake her hand and receive yet more badges. It must have been very disheartening for the other girls in our race group!

Looking back the articles of school uniform rate highly in the memory, in particular the requirement for indoor and outdoor shoes which were kept in a gingham shoe bag onto which we cross stitched our name. Regulation knickers were another mandatory item with thick heavy blue winter ones and white summer ones. Apparently, some girls wore the summer knickers under the winter ones as the dye from the winter knickers could run if they became hot but this was never something I experienced! Outerwear was a rather hideous gaberdine coat and I was always rather envious of those that had the summer panama hat, as I only had the maroon beret with a wide piece of elastic under my chin to keep it on. All purchased at Aitken and Niven which was then on George Street.

I have no recollection about the food at St Albans road except that in the junior P1 and possibly P2 we were given a 1/3 pint [I think it must have been] bottle of milk each day which was fine except when it froze and then it was drinking milky water with slushy icy pieces floating around, truly horrid.

Play time was held at the back of the school on hard surfacing surrounded by a high stone wall. Skipping games were all the rage at that time accompanied by the chant of the skipping songs in time with the swing of the rope. I also recall dashing around furiously holding a skipping rope as if it were reins around my friend who was the horse.

Being the tallest in the class I was always in the back row of the class photographs either standing or balancing on a bench. My height saw me chosen as a king in the nativity play one year and I was asked by a teacher if I could walk in this ridiculous thing they had wrapped around my legs like a nappy and waddling along I said I believed I could. Unfortunately, I saw my reflection in the window and thought how ridiculous I looked, but it certainly wasn’t the done thing to refuse to do things!

On the downside I vividly recall standing at a teacher’s desk to one side of her and being poked in the small of my back with the stub of her pencil for not getting the maths answers fast enough or worse still having the back of my knuckles hit against the edge of the desk which was very painful. I can’t imagine how the teacher thought that this was going to help.

George Square

The move to George Square was exciting and I loved being in the centre of Edinburgh and being able to get the bus to and from school by myself. Miss Fleming was a tall, intimidating woman dressed in a grey suit and pearls.

This time the lunch memories are vivid so I must have been much hungrier than I was at St Albans Road or maybe the food was better there! We would pour down the back staircase to queue up outside the dining room. Filing in we were asked what size of portion we would like before we sat at the tables on benches. There was no choice where we sat, it was just fill up the bench and move onto the next one so you could be sitting with friends or not. I don’t have good memories of the food, haggis, bacon and egg flan, the weirdest tasting blancmange in a pink or peach colour and the thick skin on the custard. Worse was one day eating mash potato I extracted a filling. I actually wrote in my diary ‘went to dentist, filling wasn’t mine!’, it must have fallen out from the mouth of one of the catering staff!

The building was fabulous with the entrance balcony being the setting for parents to be introduced to Miss Fleming on Parents’ afternoon. I fluffed my mother’s introduction as I was so nervous of Miss Fleming and was told by her to do it again, so embarrassing! In the hall below the balcony, Scottish country dancing took place and I recall one performance to our parents in which we had to sing ‘I’m looking over a four leaf clover’ and ‘Lets go fly a kite’. My favourite part of the school was being at the top of the back stair well looking over the bannister and seeing the floors below curling round and round, just beautiful.

Again, arts and crafts featured high on the positive list, particularly a papier mache Bolivian tin mine with milk bottle tops at the entrance; no idea what they were supposed to represent! I do recall in sewing class being told off in front of the class for passing a pair of scissors to a girl blade first. Basket weaving in P6 was enthusiastically undertaken but where others produced a waste paper bin with a shape that went up and out, I recall mine was the only one that went up and in, with a comment from the teacher being she had no idea how I had managed that. The basket is still going strong however, so possible had strengthening properties built into the unusual design!

When the merger came with the boys school on Colinton Road I was so sorry to leave George Square. I went on to become a chartered landscape architect and who knows if the career opportunities would have been different if I had gone through my senior years at George Square. I am proud that I was at GWLC.

Kathryn Mackie (Class of 1981)