School Dinners

Initially everyone had a cooked school dinner with the menu read out at the start by supervising teacher. One memorable occasion this was Miss Dick and spotted dick was the pudding on the menu. We anticipated a good laugh. But then she announced sultana sponge. I particularly liked the liver and bacon, also what was then called American pie (cottage pie with baked beans added to the mince) and the sponge puddings. I disliked tapioca, semolina and sago milk puddings which I usually passed to a friend when the teacher’s back was turned. You were not allowed to have any food dislikes and were expected to eat everything. After a few years Miss Fleming made an announcement at assembly that as an evening cooked meal was now the norm in most families, the next term it would be a choice of bringing a packed lunch or buying items from the school snack bar. Burgers in a bun and the soup were particularly popular.

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!