In Line And Two By Two

A Memory of Kew.

Miss Cary was short and stout with grey hair in a bun. She always wore a cameo brooch on a white silk blouse, grey skirt and sensible shoes. She was kind and patient, she was also my first teacher. One day as the mothers picked up their children she announced, 'Tomorrow my class is going on a day trip, the children will need a packed lunch and two shillings', and that was that.

The next morning we arrived clutching a packed lunch and a two bob bit, if any kid didn't have the money I think she put it in herself. This was one of Miss Cary's outings, no motor coach to pick us up, no other teacher to help and no classroom assistant in those days. This was 1952 and twenty two six-year-olds from Harmondsworth Primary School were going to Kew Gardens. We marched out the school gates at 9.15am,  in line and two by two. Miss Cary at the head, calling over her shoulder 'Keep together, children'. We walked to the Bath Road, then the main road west out of London and waited for the 81 bus, with instructions like 'Stand back from the road' and 'Everybody on the bus and keep together'. We changed buses at Hounslow, and after this journey it was a march across Kew Bridge. The Romans first crossed the river two miles up stream at Isleworth some 1,900 years earlier. Likewise Miss Cary led her troops over the Thames with the confidence of a Caesar. With a right turn at the end of the bridge, we passed the green befor reaching the main gate of Kew Gardens. Miss Cary paid the entry fee, we filled through the turnstiles and we were in.

It was a great day. We saw a Venus Flytrap, the plant that eats things, and enormous carp fish that poked their heads out the water to have a look at us. We saw great Chinese gates that probably came from Peking and we ate our lunch at the pagoda, sitting on the seats around the base.

In the afternoon we went on the bus for the trip back to school. All exhausted, but very happy. Can you imagine a teacher doing this today, she would be suspended for being irresponsible, accused of neglect and probably child cruelty too. We have lost a lot in the sterile word of today. To others Miss Cary may have been a sixty-year-old, bicycle riding spinster, but to us kids she was Boadicea, Joan of Arc and Elizabeth the First, but most of all she was our Miss Cary.