Weirdest Schoolday Memories?

Funny how things come back to me as I read through these posts! Domestic Science (so called) was my pet hate and I think the teachers felt the same about me. We had to sew a buttonhole for the sewing teacher and I took mine out to be marked - 4/10, I think, and that was perhaps a bit better than my usual. To test her, my friend took my buttonhole to be marked as hers. She got 6/10. I never did manage buttonholes successfully by hand, although when I bought a sewing machine of my own, 15 years later, I found I could almost understand how to do them. [❤️Velcro!]

l loathed needlework. I took so long to finish my cookery apron that I eventually had to smuggle it home for my mum to do it. I never finished my skirt and would never have worn the hideous thing anyway.

When I was about 13, all the girls had to go to the hall to hear a talk, given by a woman who had written a book called, "In Search of Charm." She told us all about the necessary skills to be young ladies, including deportment. I remember three of the biggest show-offs, including Jenny from our class, being chosen to swank up and down with books balanced on their heads. Presumably it was hoped that we Comprehensive School tykes could acquire Finishing School qualities in one afternoon. She had also written, "Charm Is Not Enough" which made me think "So why bother?"

How about this ! First piece of knitting I did at school. A coathanger cover !!!! Still in wardrobe.

Not strange memories, but we certainly had some weird school customs. On "School Birthday" (celebrating the time the school was founded) we all had to wear a little bunch of Michaelmas daisies. Most of us found them on the way to school growing in the gardens of derelict houses. We also had a ceremony each year where the whole school had to line up to receive "Beer Money"! The Head girl got a guinea! It was a throwback to the days when the Trustees of the school (The Worshipful Company of Brewers) would inspect the school and give all the pupils a mug of beer. As I said, very weird!

I was supposed to dissect a frog in Biology and just couldn’t do it. Not sure how I got out of it, but remember the teacher telling me I was the only person ever to get an ‘A’ level in Biology without ever doing a dissection.

Throwing up all over my reading book and being smacked on the back of my hand because I was unable to read my line as it was covered in vomit! Aged 5!

My Mum couldn’t cook or sew, and certainly could never have taught me. We had old fashioned ‘cookery and home economics’ and ‘needlework’ lessons. Very few took the subjects through to O level. We had basics drilled into us by all the means mentioned about, and sure, we mostly hated it. But thanks to the thoroughness, patience and persistence of the two teachers, I raised a large family on a shoestring.

I can make clothes, repair damaged garments and furnishings and do tailoring. I made my own very complicated wedding dress from lining fabric and upholstery remnants.

I can cook healthy, wholesome meals, bread and cakes from scratch, and rarely need to use a cookery book. I can bone and butcher game, birds and fish, and I leave very little food waste.

I can plan meals, make up a shopping list and budget.

I’ve used these life skills for longer and to more effect than any other subject I studied at school. In fact, my degree and doctorate are in a subject I wasn’t allowed to do for O or A level!

I remember in junior school watching a film about a school for blind children and one of the children ring a hand bell to signify the end of the lesson - I went flying out of the school hall as I had forgotten to ring the bell myself as the film had been very interesting.

When I was 12 our school entered us in a national handwriting competition. A few months later a teacher told me I was the winner and he thought the prize was a bicycle. I waited and waited and heard nothing more. I was too shy to approach the teacher as I didn't really know him. What happened to my bike? I'll never know!

In a biology lesson a swan flew into overhead wires and met it’s fate, poor thing. Our teacher then proceeded to dissect it as part of the lesson. I remember feeling very upset ? Hated biology after that.

I remember a coach arriving to take us on a school trip and we arrived at an old cemetery to do grave rubbings with paper and charcoal.
Also I had to make our biology teacher a coffee one day and opened the fridge for the milk to find a pile of dead rats that his next class were going to use for dissecting.

Our school celebrated the School Birthday (at the beginning of March, so usually freezing cold) with an assembly on the school field around the flagpole. The school flag was raised, the teachers having hastily removed the bra/knickers already flying high and put there the night before by the local boys school. The school hymn sung, the school poem read, and a "jolly hockey sticks" oration from the headmistress followed.

The rest of the morning was taken up with a skit in the school hall, put on by the (usually staid and unsmiling) staff. Old Uncle Tom Cobbley springs to mind.

Lunch, and then all outside again to support Oxford and Cambridge netball and hockey team games.

And all the while we wore buttonholes of daffodil and pussy willow tied with dark or light blue ribbon depending on whether you supported Oxford or Cambridge.

Anyone recognise the school?

An 'educational' trip was organised for our class at school - to a local brewery to see how "Johnny Walkers" was brewed. - The teachers got free samples, they wouldn't give us any!!

Grandmabatty. Your chocolate prize. Was that when Cadburys did a massive campaign with schools.sending posters, teaching aids and cardboard cocoa beans to schools. Circa 1966. I remember we were all given a small bar of chocolate.

I used to move about the classroom talking to people pretending to need a pencil sharpener. One teacher told me to "get in my desk" so I opened the lid and say in the desk. She didn't appreciate me taking her literally and sent me to the head masters office. When I told him what I had done I could see him trying not to laugh.

not say SAT in my desk

Aged 7 in primary school , a very hard winter and we were turned out at playtime. The wall surrounding the school had sloping stones on the top. The snow had settled there and I wrote my name with my finger in the snow. Next lesson the head teacher came into my class , called me out and told me in no uncertain terms that I had made the wall untidy!! He sent me out to wipe my name away. I knew he was being unjust and petty. However I did as I was told - he was not a nice character ! A bully and a tyrant. As you can see I never forgave him . Happy days - I think not !!

I sat on the desk at primary and soon found out why it wasn't allowed as the ink from the ink well soaked into my skirt and underpants. I had a blue bottom for weeks and my mom was very cross.

I remember being in the first year of my new secondary school and watching the film, 'Culloden'. Pretty gruesome but amazing education. The teacher who ordered the films showed us Olivier's 'Hamlet' and 'The Third Man' amongst others. You would probablt have to pay thousands of pounds to have the quality of education we had then for nothing.

First time messaging on here so hope I am doing things correctly. Is anyone else a constant worrier. I am fed up with worrying about everything! When in lockdown, I didn’t worry so much - probably because I wasn’t seeing anyone and we couldn’t do anything! I have always been prone to anxiety but it is getting me down. There is always something. I worried last week because I didn’t send a sympathy card to my sister-in-law on the death of her brother and today I have been out with friends for a coffee and I treated them but then someone else turned up to join us and went in to get her own coffee and something to eat and I now feel I should have paid for hers as well. She probably would have refused as she was eating as well but that will bother me now - all over a £2.50 cup of coffee. I just don’t feel I can get things right grr. I know you can’t help me but just felt I needed to unburden.

At the end of our final year in Junior School, we had to put on an entertainment for the staff and our fellow pupils. I did a ballet solo, accomapanied by a friend on the piano (it was the waltz from Coppelia). I made up the steps myself, more or less as I went along. It was encored, which was a little awkward as I wasn’t too sure what I’d done. I wonder how many noticed that the second dance was a bit different from the first?

My friend's dad was a butcher and used to supply the school with hearts eyes, kidneys etc for the biology labs. She used to bring them on a carrier bag on the school bus.

We had to do an essay on chocolate with bars of choc from Cadburys. But the teachers made such a fuss about the handwriting that I thought it was a handwriting competition

I remember going on a school trip, I was still at primary school and the trip was to Stratford upon Avon, it took ages on the coach as we lived in Sheffield. We visited Anne Hathaway's cottage and the church before eating our packed lunches. Afterwards, we went to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre to see A Midsummer Night's Dream. I always wondered whose benefit that was for because the play was lost on us aged 10.
I seem to have had bad luck where the stage is involved. At grammar school aged 16 I remember taking part in a musical version of a Tale of Two Cities, I was an aristocrat and wore a jacket type top with a lace jabot. On the evening of the public performance (parents), after being executed by guillotine my body was pulled from the stage. Unfortunately, my pants began to roll down with the friction. Needless to say, the corpse grabbed his knickers which caused much hilarity for everyone except me.

On a school trip to build stamina and independence we had to paddle a Canadian canoe across a lake. Our team paddled so vigorously we ended up in the water, fortunately near the far shore, but it was a long wet paddle back.